Vassilopoulos, Maria Christina; (2024) How Did The ‘Book War’ Challenge the Identity of the British Book Trade? Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Between 1900 and 1997, the British book trade operated with regulations known collectively as the Net Book Agreement, which prohibited retailers from reducing the price of certain new books. The ‘Book War’ occurred between 1906 and 1908, soon after the agreement had been introduced and after a dispute between the Publishers’ Association (PA) and The Times Book Club over its terms. The resulting conflict revealed that the Net Book Agreement was not robust and, furthermore, that it did not include regulations for all new books nor those which were older or second-hand. Although a certain amount of room for an unregulated marketplace for the benefit of some publishers and book retailers was in existence, the conflict saw the owners of the Book Club call for price controls in the British book trade to be fully scrapped, and the reading public were drawn into this dispute through articles in The Times and the wider British press. The ‘Book War’ became the first public-facing challenge to the PA’s right to uphold price controls on books and called the organisation of the British book trade at the beginning of the twentieth century into question. This study uses primary source material held in private book trade and digital newspaper archives to reveal how the ‘Book War’ challenged the British publishing and bookselling industries. The discovery and dissemination of this material, some of which has never been analysed, serves two main purposes. The first is to build upon the account of publishers Frederick Macmillan and Edward Bell,1 which was found to be the longest commentary on the conflict. The second is to capture the opinions and conversations that occurred between booksellers, publishers, authors, and the reading public during the ‘Book War.’ The collection and analysis of this information will form the foundations of a social and cultural historiography of the beginning years of the Net Book Agreement using archival material. Through these aims, much has been discovered that will aid the expansion of knowledge into the mechanics of practices and the rationales of individuals in the British book trade at the turn of the twentieth century.

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