Swapping gossip, swapping profit:the book barter economy in the early modern Low Countries

The early modern book economy thrived on a system of bartering, swapping printed sheets for printed sheets or other valuable bookish material. Widely discussed as Tauschhandel in the context of the Frankfurt Book Fair, this practice continued to flourish in the Low Countries during the seventeenth century as the fair’s popularity declined. This article examines the bartering practices between the Officina Plantiniana in the city of Antwerp, the best-documented print business of the handpress era, and merchants and booksellers in its northern neighbour Amsterdam. While the output of the Plantin... Mehr ...