{"id":7854,"date":"2016-10-13T13:55:27","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T20:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=7854"},"modified":"2016-10-18T13:58:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T20:58:35","slug":"james-lackington-bookseller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2016\/10\/13\/james-lackington-bookseller\/","title":{"rendered":"James Lackington, Bookseller"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Literary Hub<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

THE MAN WHO INVENTED BOOKSELLING AS WE KNOW IT<\/h1>\n

ON JAMES LACKINGTON’S TEMPLE OF THE MUSES, “THE CHEAPEST BOOKSTORE IN THE WORLD”<\/b><\/p>\n

By\u00a0John\u00a0Pipkin<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Today, few people are likely to remember James Lackington (1746-1815) and his once-famous London bookshop, The Temple of the Muses, but if, as a customer, you\u2019ve ever bought a remaindered book at deep discount, or wandered thoughtfully through the over-stocked shelves of a cavernous bookstore, or spent an afternoon lounging in the reading area of a bookshop (without buying anything!) then you\u2019ve already experienced some of the ways that Lackington revolutionized bookselling in the late 18th century. And if you\u2019re a bookseller, then the chances are that you\u2019ve encountered marketing strategies and competitive pressures that trace their origins to Lackington\u2019s shop. In the 21st-century marketplace, there is sometimes a longing for an earlier, simpler age, but the uneasy tension between giant and small retailers seems to have been a constant since the beginning. The Temple of the Muses, which was one of the first modern bookstores, was a mammoth enterprise, by far the largest bookstore in England, boasting an inventory of over 500,000 volumes, annual sales of 100,000 books, and yearly revenues of \u00a35,000 (roughly $700,000 today<\/em>). All of this made Lackington a very wealthy man\u2014admired by some and despised by others\u2014but London\u2019s greatest bookseller began his career inauspiciously as an illiterate shoemaker.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at LitHub.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Literary Hub THE MAN WHO INVENTED BOOKSELLING AS WE KNOW IT ON JAMES LACKINGTON’S TEMPLE OF THE MUSES, “THE CHEAPEST BOOKSTORE IN THE WORLD” By\u00a0John\u00a0Pipkin Today, few people are likely to remember James Lackington (1746-1815) and his once-famous London bookshop, The Temple of the Muses, but if, as a customer, you\u2019ve ever bought a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}