Choose your own adventure… in radical journalism. Part 2.
So, unlike in your alternate incarnation in Part 1, you are a subversively-minded French journalist who actually does live in France. Well, that’s tough. However, all is not lost. Yes, you probably won’t be able to start your own newspaper here: the royal power is keen on censorship, and only grants respective privileges to thoroughly loyal publications. However, there is another format available to you: namely, the pamphlets.
Now, what are the pamphlets? You’ve likely heard the word; but what does it actually signify? For starters, it’s not a synonym of a periodical: they are not regular publications, but rather one-off responses to particular events. That fact gives them the kind of sharp topicality that a regular newspaper relying on subscriptions might not always possess. They can be very long indeed, but more usually they take the form of thin octavo booklets, quite distinct from books and magazines. And - attention, this part is important for you - they are cheap to produce. You don’t need to spend your hard-earned livres on leasing a proper establishment of your own and buying a printing press. There are dedicated existing printers of pamphlets who can help you. Yes, their type would be likely second-hand and their press would be looking like something that was broken thrice and then cobbled together… but think of the expense you’d save!
Now, of course the public is willing to overlook the clumsy production because the topics you’d be acquainting them with would be sharp and urgent. Which topics would that be… well, what is the political crisis du jour?
Are the Jesuits being expelled from the realm? Write about their shocking dishonesty and patchy track record in advising kings; or take the other side and decry the expulsion as a destruction of great patrons of learning;
Are the Parlements of whatever provinces pitting themselves against the royal power? (It happens surprisingly often). Take the side of these brave souls guarding the kingdom against royal caprices… or remind the public that their members are all wealthy noblemen are usually guarding themselves against the need to pay taxes.
Is there a new royal mistress? Well, that topic never gets old. Granted, the young Louis XVI is somewhat disappointing in that regard (he seems to have no interest in touching even his own wife), but most of the ladies who had warmed his late predecessor’s bed are still fresh in people’s memories. A vivid biography of one of them, perhaps? Expose the corruption of the court, the rot in the heart of Versailles? A worthy topic - but the kind of pill people swallow better when it is sweetened with tales of fleshly delights and luxurious gowns. (Some things never change).
Is it any time after 1787? You simply have to write in defense on calling the Estates-General. Someone has to - after all, the actual powers at the top prevaricate as usual, and might need just a little push in the form of the public opinion. Or a big push.
I might sound flippant, but I really am quite serious - it is to the pamphlet writers of the last three decades that we owe the wide spread of such concepts as “citizen”, “liberty vs. despotism”, “the rights of man”, and even “republicanism.” Yes, there had been great and earnest tomes discussing them all, but is an average person on the street likely to read several volumes of Encyclopedia (and these aren’t cheap!), or to gulp down a few pamphlets (and these actually are).
As for production… no, don’t print it here in Paris. First of all, it would be hard to find a printer willing to take it on, and second, the city guild of printers and booksellers is keeping a dead medieval grip on… well, printers and booksellers.
Frankly, you better send the text out to be printed in Avignon - it’s a French city alright, but due to one old quirk of medieval history, it is still considered to be technically a Papal enclave. Yes, you’ve heard that right: the Catholic Church is a more lenient and less censorious overlord than the French monarchy you were born under. And then people are asking why do you need the whole Estates-General thing…
So, onto distribution. The simplest method is doing that through peddlers (Colporteurs): these people crucial for disseminating popular literature (as well as new decrees and judicial memoirs… a surprisingly well-selling genre!) in both cities and the countryside. They also evade the police easily, since they have no fixed premises.
But suppose a few booksellers grew interested in your oeuvre. They would quietly refer to it as a “chestnut” - an industry code for illicit publications. They would insert requests for such things on separate, unsigned scraps of paper, or mark dangerous titles with a cross.
Books are "married" (sheets of one stuffed into another) to conceal them, or hidden in the bottom of crates or packing material. Think of all the tales of intrepid smuggling you’ve ever read. Well, you’ll be doing something like that now, but with pamphlets. Due to the expenses associated with all of these difficulties, it is not unknown for forbidden pamphlets to cost quite a lot (though, mind you, still within the reach of skilled workers).
Now, supposed you do actually want to own your own regular publication. What then? Well… you can always write it out by hand. No, I am not joking, and in the next article I am going to tell you how you are going to manage it.