ABSTRACT
Besides direct sales, printers and publishers could rely on booksellers to market their editions in Paris and elsewhere. The chapter explores the role of booksellers in the marketing and distribution circuit, focusing primarily on the early sixteenth-century business of Jean Macé in Rennes, who had family ties to Norman printers and commercial connections to other printers in Paris. The longevity of his thirty-year business speaks to his market knowledge: What did he know that less successful booksellers did not? Resting on the extensive bibliographic research of scholars, the chapter shows that the longevity of Macé’s business speaks to his effective commercial venture, which he shared with his partners in Normandy, and to his discerning market knowledge, which led him to identify Rennes as a good base for bookselling with a booklist tailored to the Breton literate audience.
