Reich bookseller

The Empire booksellers were a group of publishers and booksellers , which in the 18th and in the 19th century against the north German publishers, led by Philipp Erasmus Reich fought initiated reforms in the German book market. The imperial booksellers came mainly from the southern German areas, Austria, including the reprint Thomas von Trattner , and Switzerland.

The Reich booksellers criticized the reforms decided by the Leipzig publishers and companies, which put foreign publishers and companies at a financial disadvantage at the Leipzig Book Fair . This disadvantage also led to the fact that the imperial booksellers came together in 1755 in Hanau, Hesse , to exchange reprints of the most popular north German printed matter at a specially founded trade fair , the so-called Hanau book cover . One of the reasons for the conflict was the form of trade introduced by the Leipzigers; net trade was intended to replace the barter trade that had been in effect until then . This new form of trading brought the imperial booksellers such serious financial disadvantages that they developed the so-called imperial bookstore type .

The trading form Reichbuchshandlungart was also adopted by the north German publishers in 1788 with the so-called Nuremberg closing of 1788. 19 booksellers from southern Germany and Switzerland had asked for a general right of return and a 33% discount on purchases. This new form of trade represented a compromise between the previously existing barter trade (also known as Verstechen or change trade) and the net trade used by the Leipzigers , which has remained a common form of book trade in Germany in the form of conditional trade alongside fixed purchase .

literature

• Lexicon of the entire book industry. Volume III. 2nd Edition. Publisher Anton Hiersemann: Stuttgart, 1991.