In the previous chapter we saw how the local characteristics of the production of Ganot's textbooks shaped the making of his physique in nineteenth-century Paris. But how was Ganot's physique communicated across France and beyond? The aim of this chapter is to show the major role that publishers and booksellers had in this context, and to demonstrate that their appropriation of Ganot's textbooks through professional practice did not only involve circulation, but also the production of new meanings for Ganot's physics in England.

By the early 1860s, Ganot's Traité had had nine editions and was well known in France and abroad. His Cours had just been published and, owing to its success, Ganot was thinking about preparing its second edition. From the beginning of his publishing venture, Ganot placed his textbooks in the shops of the major scientific and medical publishers in Paris, and in provincial cities with large lycées and with faculties of science such as Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg and Toulouse. Booksellers supplying his books, such as Hachette, Delalain, Labé, J.-B. Baillière and Victor Masson, had competing physics textbooks in the market, or began to prepare them between the late 1850s and early 1860s. Ganot also sold his books by the post, and he arranged their distribution in Belgium – the major foreign customer for French books, followed by England.