Praenumeration was an early form of the subscription business model, common in the 18th-century German book trade, in which a publisher sold a book that was planned but had not yet been printed, usually at a discount, so as to cover printing costs in advance. The practice was particularly common with magazines, since collecting payment beforehand helped a publisher determine in advance how many subscribers there would be. Johann Heinrich Zedler used praenumeration in the early 18th century to fund a planned collection of the works of Martin Luther, advertising the book for sale by praenumeration before its first volume was printed, though he ran into difficulty by the time the eleventh and final volume was issued years later, having already spent praenumeration payments intended for those future volumes.
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Praenumeration, the eighteenth-century practice of paying booksellers in advance to fund a book printing, is a documented historical precursor to the modern subscription business model.
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