The emergence of a market for books in Europe in the sixteenth century makes for an interesting starting point. Beginning in this period, two methods of financing emerge which have clearly collaborative elements. Firstly, publishing associations and cooperatives were established, where individuals came together in the form of a mutual fund to share the financial risk associated with printing and distribution, as well as potential profits. This system was more prominent in the French market, but over the course of the following centuries it progressively spread across much of political and activist publishing. Secondly, the same period saw the development of publication by subscription, a model initiated in England in the seventeenth century, and an obvious forerunner of the modern cultural crowdfunding model. The publisher made a prospectus which presented the work, and this was distributed to potential buyers, who could then subscribe to buy a copy and would have their names printed among the list of funders inside the book. Publication depended on the number of subscribers and, in particularly successful cases, the amount raised made it possible to reprint the book for what we would now call the ‘traditional’ market.
We must keep in mind that, at the time, this method of financing through ‘mutualist cooperation’ was not seen as a marginal model, or as a last resort. Instead, we should think of it as one of many coexisting forms of capitalization during this period—one which, in some cases, was distinctive for entirely shortcircuiting the professional figure of the expert, evaluative editor still familiar to us now. For example, this system was used to publish most of Jane Austen’s novels, with certain aristocratic subscribers paying a higher price before publication and having their name printed in the finished book. This model also met with great success in the US, even up to the end of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain’s books were initially published exclusively in this way, as the curators of an exhibition at Cornell University Library on Twain note:
The subscription publication industry blossomed in post-Civil War America. Tens of thousands of sales agents, many of them veterans and war widows, canvassed small towns and rural areas armed with a sales prospectus and a ‘book’ containing sample pages and illustrations, and ofering multiple binding options to fit every décor and price range. Prospective buyers selected a binding and signed an agreement to pay for the book when it was delivered to their door. (CLU 2010)7
This is a model very close to that of those gift–counter-gift platforms that ofer diferent tiers of reward depending on the amount given.
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Cultural Crowdfunding: Platform Capitalism, Labour and Globalization