The Development Of Market Oriented Publishing Industry In Britain, 1800-1900

Marketization, which provoked the most profound reform of the publishing industry in human history, was the keynote of the 19th century British publishing history, thus gave birth to the modern configuration of its publishing industry. As the intrinsic marketization prototype,19th century British book publishing industry will provide us with a further understanding of the modern publishing industry ,at the same time, reveal the nature and general laws of the publishing marketization, if we make an overall research on the reasons and the development laws of this marketization process. The paper analyses the motives and main threads of the 19th century British publishing marketizaion using history induction and logic inference. The internal cause of the 19th century marketization was that every publisher was trying to maximize its individual benefits, while the newly-emerging lucrative opportunities arising from the external changes contributed to the external cause of this process. The drive that this external cause exerted on the 19th British publishing industry was, in fact, the result of three joint forces, mainly including the pulling force rooted in the book market demands, the internal driving force born of the spiritual production, and the pushing force of the printing technology reform. The 19th century British book publishing marketization was made up of three historical threads. They were the improvement of copyright protection and its exchange system, the perfection of the publishing market mechanism, and the development of division of labor. The paper made a demonstrative inference of the three historical threads based on a vast library of historical materials. The 19th century British book publishing marketization process was a historical movement promoted by the joint forces from the upper, middle and lower streams of the publishing industry chain. Also it was an innovative process of the market system evolving endogenously, exogenously, and progressively. Thus research on this part will enlighten our future work about China's undergoing publishing marketization in terms of the path selection, advancing mode, system construction, ethical system construction, and so on.