This article explores a group of editorial mechanisms through which editors shape books as a function of their readers ideals. It also examines the commonplace notion in the history of publishing and reading that “meaning is inscribed in its own material forms”: in the case of the book, though the visual, typography, the relationship between the white page and black letters, size, binding, etc. The article is based on a careful study of a collection of popular books, the Spanish Araluce collection, which circulated widely in both Colombian cities and the countryside during the first half of the twentieth century.