Watch This Space: Wilkie Collins and New Strategies in Victorian Publishing in the 1890s

Abstract

The 1890s were a difficult time for established publishers as old formats and price strategies were threatened by entrepreneurial publishers proposing innovative practices. It was a time of much discussion about net book pricing in the trade periodicals where fears were expressed that what had happened in Germany following failure of price control would also happen in Britain. If the system failed, the whole structure of the industry could be in jeopardy. There was, too, some uncertainty as to where the demand for print, and consequently the ‘mass market’ (Anon. 1881, 422ff.), was going to emerge.