Émile de Girardin Claims to Publish 1,300,000 Copies of "l'Almanach de France" for 1833

In 1833 French politician and publisher Emile de Girardin issued the first annual l'Almanach de France "for all French people who can read" by the Sociéte pour L'Émancipation Intellectuelle. The small book was crammed with all kinds of useful information, including various crude woodcut illustrations. Girardin was very aggressive in marketing this almanac as a bargain, advertising on its cover and title page that it was being published in an edition of 1,300,000 copies at the price of "dix sous", that it contained 224 pages containing 600,000 letters of type, and that normally a volume of this size would cost 6 francs. He indicated that the Almanach would be for sale in 37,200 communes in France.

Most probably this was the first time in history that a publisher claimed to publish any book in an edition of a million or more copies--a number that would have been virtually impossible to print by an army of pressmen on hundreds of hand-presses, before the invention of printing machines. Considering how few printing machines were available in France in 1833, it is likely that it took several months to print over a million copies of the almanac, if that many copies were actually sold. Perhaps the entire edition was sold out, since Girardin actually issued a second edition of the Almanach in 1833; however on the title page of the second edition he did not mention anything about the number of copies printed.