I just read in Alison Adburgham's beautifully written Shopping in Style: London from the Restoration to Edwardian Elegance about practices such as...
Acquisitions editors cum publishers cum printers cum booksellers would acquire an already-done manuscript or ask that it be written...and would proceed often to print it themselves...and would sell it in their smallish bookshops.
It was also interesting that a habit I've seen in certain bookshop chains today that highly annoys me was considered in the 1600s to be normal -- to allow customers to stay there even all day, reading and writing! I probably should reconsider my grievance, though I think it is truly annoying to buy a "new" book or periodical from such a place, get it home, and realize someone spilled their coffee inside or folded over some edges....
The booksellers sometimes advertised by giving out free tables of contents, or posting (as on a doorframe) free title pages to entice readers. Prospective readers could look at some sheafs of printed pages -- the books would not always be bound until the customer decided on the binding that would most suit their home libraries -- which solved a mystery for me of why my by-far oldest book is bound in such a unique way but shows no sign of having been rebound at any point.
Something about all this bustle of little publishers also reminds me of publishing on the web........Does it you? And doesn't it make you want to unpack ye olde time-traveling equipment?
