Isaiah Thomas Invents the Bookstore Chain |
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| Authors: | David Emblidge |
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| Institution: | (1) Emerson College, 120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116, USA |
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| Abstract: | We think of bookstore chains—Barnes and Noble, Brentanos, Walden Books, or the defunct Borders—as recent phenomena. But, the
roots of franchised bookselling lie deep in American publishing history. A case can be made that late eighteenth century publisher-printer
Isaiah Thomas, of Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, was the originator of the bookstore chain. At his zenith, Thomas and
various partners had eleven stores operating in a network reaching from Boston to Albany to Baltimore, with branches in New
Hampshire and Vermont. Driving the Thomas publishing-bookselling enterprise was a form of vertical corporate integration of
publishing services (all the way from papermaking to distribution of product) that would, under today’s antitrust laws be
hard to justify legally. At the time, in the 1790s–1810, Thomas’s multiple interlocking businesses were, nonetheless, truly
a bookman’s empire, with bestsellers like almanacs and textbooks leading the way. |
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