Conference on the Book Trade — for academics only!

London - Next month, a two day conference on the 16th Century book trade is being held in the City of London. Tickets start from £40 for students.

This conference is actually on only one specific aspect of the 16th Century book trade according to a leaflet currently floating around the British Library. It is being held at Stationers' Hall (where else?) in the City of London. Speakers include Christine Ferdinand of Magdalene College, Oxford and Michael Harris - co-founder of this annual event way back in 1981. Full details can be obtained from The Antiquarian Booksellers Association. The book trade in the 1500s was very different from the one we know today. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the British Library (the Legal Deposit Library for England) was adding around 5 shelf miles of material every year. The Internet has led to an explosion on top of that, and literacy is universal, certainly in the West, Japan and other advanced countries. Who wrote books in the 1500s? Who commissioned them? Who read them? How did publishers make money? If you want the answers to those questions you can resort to your search engine, but if you want answers face to face from people who know what they are talking about, this conference is for you.