Coordination in early modern Dutch book markets

Abstract

This chapter examines this market culture by statistically measuring patterns of innovation in the Dutch market for books. It explores with the identification of new product groups and products in data gathered from early modern Dutch title pages. Clearly, all these devices and institutions contributed to coordination in the increasingly complex markets for books and knowledge. To operationalize the quantitative study of titles and title pages as market devices, we have developed a methodological framework integrating research on early modern material culture, cultural economic theory, and we have tested it on a wonderful dataset of the title pages of books produced in the early modern Dutch Republic: the Short Title Catalogue Netherlands of the Dutch Royal Library. Diversity allows us to assess just how thematically differentiated the Dutch publishing business was; similarity measures approximate novelty in relation to other titles; and the burstiness algorithm helps to establish how ‘novelties’ stick or resonate over time.