This article examines the process of elaboration, edition and circulation of the Compendio de Historia de América, published in 1865 by the Chilean intellectual Diego Barros Arana. This analysis shows, on the one hand, the complex functioning of the industry and the educational print market in Chile in the mid-nineteenth century, while exposing the forms of relationships between the agents associated with the existence of the book. On the other hand, it enables us to understand the mechanisms that facilitated the mobility of this printed material at a national and regional scale, and to uncovers the reasons that explain its validity as a reference text for the teaching of the subject for more than half a century. Thus, through the compilation of diferent editions of the text, archival material and diverse bibliography, the double function of the work as a pedagogical tool for the transmission of a discourse (liberal and Americanist) and as a relevant product or object —like all those of its genre— for the viability of the Chilean printing industry is revealed.