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90-622: The Gutenberg Bible , also known as the 42-line Bible , the Mazarin Bible or the B42 , was the earliest major book printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type . It marked the start of the " Gutenberg Revolution " and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities and its historical significance. The Gutenberg Bible

180-555: A cover ; they were preceded by several earlier formats, including the scroll and the tablet . The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination. As a conceptual object, a book refers to a written work of substantial length, which may be distributed either physically or digitally as an ebook . These works can be broadly classified into fiction (containing invented content, often narratives) and non-fiction (containing content intended as factual truth). A physical book may not contain such

270-413: A page is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined from examination of the books, bibliographers may not use these terms in scholarly descriptions. While some form of book illustration has existed since the invention of writing, the modern Western tradition of illustration began with 15th-century block books , in which the book's text and images were cut into

360-504: A German poem, and some editions of Aelius Donatus 's Ars Minor , a popular Latin grammar school book. Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is Gutenberg's 31-line Indulgence which certainly existed by 22 October 1454. Gutenberg made three significant changes during

450-413: A book for the printer, the typesetting part of the job has flowed upstream, where it is done either by separately contracting companies working for the publisher, by the publishers themselves, or even by the authors. Mergers in the book manufacturing industry mean that it is now unusual to find a bindery which is not also involved in book printing (and vice versa). If the book is a hardback its path through

540-466: A book is printed, the pages are laid out on the plate so that after the printed sheet is folded the pages will be in the correct sequence. Books tend to be manufactured nowadays in a few standard sizes. The sizes of books are usually specified as "trim size": the size of the page after the sheet has been folded and trimmed. The standard sizes result from sheet sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years ago, and have come to dominate

630-560: A continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a shorter time. As the production line circulates, a complete "book" is collected together in one stack of pages, and another machine carries out the folding, pleating, and stitching of the pages into bundles of signatures (sections of pages) ready to go into the gathering line. The pages of a book are printed two at a time, not as one complete book. Excess numbers are printed to make up for any spoilage due to make-readies or test pages to assure final print quality. A make-ready

720-456: A cover. By extension, book refers to a physical book's written, printed, or graphic contents. A single part or division of a longer written work may also be called a book , especially for some works composed in antiquity: each part of Aristotle 's Physics , for example, is a book. It is difficult to create a precise definition of the book that clearly delineates it from other kinds of written material across time and culture. The meaning of

810-685: A damaged paper copy of volume II. The largest portion of this, the New Testament, is now owned by Indiana University. The leaf carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel was donated to the General Theological Seminary to repair their copy of the bible (now located at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek). The matching first volume of this copy

900-404: A definite number of volumes (such as a multi-volume novel), in contrast to serial or periodical publications . The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship , codicology , bibliography , philology , palaeography , art history , social history and cultural history . It aims to demonstrate that

990-539: A difference of about 12 per cent). The ratio of 1:1.4 was a long established one for medieval paper sizes. A single complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,288 pages (4×322 = 1288) (usually bound in two volumes); with four pages per folio-sheet, 322 sheets of paper are required per copy. The Bible's paper consists of linen fibers and is thought to have been imported from Caselle in Piedmont, Italy based on

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1080-419: A few were certainly used for study. Kristian Jensen suggests that many copies were bought by wealthy and pious laymen for donation to religious institutions. The Gutenberg Bible had a profound effect on the history of the printed book. Textually, it also had an influence on future editions of the Bible. It provided the model for several later editions, including the 36 Line Bible , Mentelin's Latin Bible, and

1170-455: A forged leaf, carrying part of Chapter 14, all of Chapter 15, and part of Chapter 16 of the Book of Ezekiel . It was impossible to tell when the leaf had been inserted into the volume. It was replaced in the fall of 1953, when a patron donated the corresponding leaf from a defective Gutenberg second volume which was being broken up and sold in parts. This made it "the first imperfect Gutenberg Bible ever restored to completeness." In 1978, this copy

1260-494: A form with defined boundaries; and "information architecture" like linear structure and certain textual elements) that form a "hierarchy of the book", in which formats that fulfill more criteria are considered more similar to the traditional printed book. Although in academic language a monograph is a specialist work on a single subject, in library and information science the term is used more broadly to mean any non-serial publication complete in one volume (a physical book) or

1350-485: A hole through which a string could pass, and with these the sheets were tied together with a string to bind like a book. In woodblock printing, a relief image of an entire page is carved into blocks of wood, inked, and used to print copies of that page. It originated in the Han dynasty before 220 AD, used to print textiles and later paper, and was widely used throughout East Asia . The oldest dated book printed by this method

1440-466: A layer of whitewash applied before writing. New World codices were written as late as the 16th century (see Maya codices and Aztec codices ). Those written before the Spanish conquests seem all to have been single long sheets folded concertina-style, sometimes written on both sides of the local amatl paper. Manuscripts, handwritten and hand-copied documents, were the only form of writing before

1530-517: A number of social consequences, including censorship . The modern book industry has seen several major changes due to new technologies, including ebooks and audiobooks (recordings of books being read aloud). Awareness of the needs of print-disabled people has led to a rise in formats designed for greater accessibility , such as braille printing and large-print editions. Google Books estimated in 2010 that approximately 130 million total unique books had been published. The word book comes from

1620-411: A paragraph or more. The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms commonly used by contemporary libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books ranges from folio (the largest), to quarto (smaller) and octavo (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of

1710-553: A particular book. The earliest forms of writing were etched on tablets, transitioning to palm leaves and papyrus in ancient times. Parchment and paper later emerged as important substrates for bookmaking, introducing greater durability and accessibility. Across regions like China , the Middle East , Europe , and South Asia , diverse methods of book production evolved. The Middle Ages saw the rise of illuminated manuscripts, intricately blending text and imagery, particularly during

1800-427: A piece of master type in order to be replicated. Given that each letter has uppercase and lowercase forms, and the number of various punctuation marks and ligatures (e.g., " fi " for the letter sequence "fi", commonly used in writing), the Gutenberg Bible needed a set of 290 master characters. It seems probable that six pages, containing 15,600 characters altogether, would be set at any one moment. The Gutenberg Bible

1890-406: A publishing company in order to be put on the market by distributors and bookstores. The publisher negotiates a formal legal agreement with authors in order to obtain the copyright to works, then arranges for them to be produced and sold. The major steps of the publishing process are: editing and proofreading the work to be published; designing the printed book; manufacturing the books; and selling

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1980-480: A single physical section , called a quinternion , that could then be bound into a book. Some sections, however, had as few as four leaves or as many as twelve leaves. The 42-line Bible was printed on the size of paper known as 'Royal'. A full sheet of Royal paper measures 42 cm × 60 cm (17 in × 24 in) and a single untrimmed folio leaf measures 42 cm × 30 cm (17 in × 12 in). There have been attempts to claim that

2070-455: A width-to-height ratio of 1:1.4 (e.g. 30:42 cm) which, mathematically, is a ratio of 1 to the square root of 2 or, simply, 2 {\textstyle {\sqrt {2}}} . Many suggest that this ratio was chosen to match the so-called Golden Ratio , 1 + 5 2 {\textstyle {\tfrac {1+{\sqrt {5}}}{2}}} , of 1:1.6; in fact the ratios are, plainly, not at all similar (equating to

2160-460: A work: for example, it may contain only drawings, engravings, photographs, puzzles, or removable content like paper dolls . It may also be left empty for personal use, as in the case of account books , appointment books, autograph books , notebooks , diaries and sketchbooks . Books are sold at both regular stores and specialized bookstores, as well as online for delivery, and can be borrowed from libraries . The reception of books has led to

2250-666: Is The Diamond Sutra (868 AD). The method (called woodcut when used in art) arrived in Europe in the early 14th century. Books (known as block-books ), as well as playing-cards and religious pictures , began to be produced by this method. Creating an entire book was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page, and the wooden blocks could crack if stored for too long. The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c.  1045 , but there are no known surviving examples of his printing. Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg independently invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting

2340-482: Is a bifolium (plural bifolia ); a gathering of two sheets (i.e. four leaves, eight sides) is a binion ; and one of five sheets (10 leaves, 20 sides) is a quinion . This last meaning is preserved in the modern Italian meaning of quire : quinterno di carta . When bookbinders started using paper, it became possible to easily stitch five to seven sheets at a time, and the number of sheets per gathering started to vary more. This article about making art out of books ,

2430-629: Is a possible precursor of modern bound books. The etymology of the word codex (block of wood) suggests that it may have developed from wooden wax tablets. Scrolls made from papyrus were first used for writing in Ancient Egypt , perhaps as early as the First Dynasty , although the earliest evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). According to Herodotus (History 5:58),

2520-603: Is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz , in present-day Germany . Forty-nine copies (or substantial portions of copies) have survived. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible displayed in Frankfurt to promote

2610-458: Is from Martial , in his Apophoreta CLXXXIV at the end of the first century, where he praises its compactness. However, the codex never gained much popularity in the pagan Hellenistic world, and only within the Christian community did it gain widespread use. This change happened gradually during the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the reasons for adopting the codex form of the book were several:

2700-509: Is given by UNESCO : for the purpose of recording national statistics on book production, it recommended that a book be defined as "a non-periodical printed publication of at least 49 pages, exclusive of the cover pages, published in the country and made available to the public", distinguishing them from other written material such as pamphlets . Kovač et al. have critiqued this definition for failing to account for new digital formats. They propose four criteria (a minimum length; textual content;

2790-422: Is printed in the blackletter type styles that would become known as Textualis (Textura) and Schwabacher . The name Textura refers to the texture of the printed page: straight vertical strokes combined with horizontal lines, giving the impression of a woven structure. Gutenberg already used the technique of justification , that is, creating a vertical, not indented, alignment at the left and right-hand sides of

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2880-409: Is the basic building block of codex bindings. In Western bookbinding, sections are sewn through their folds, with the sewing thread securing each section to the one bound before it. The gatherings can be seen by looking at the top or bottom sides of the book, though cheaper modern books are perfect bound with no gatherings, each sheet glued directly to the binding. The gatherings are sewn together at

2970-498: Is the book's front matter , which includes all textual material after the front cover but not part of the book's content such as a foreword, a dedication, a table of contents and publisher data such as the book's edition or printing number and place of publication. Between the body copy and the back cover goes the end matter which would include any indices, sets of tables, diagrams, glossaries or lists of cited works (though an edited book with several authors usually places cited works at

3060-452: Is the preparatory work carried out by the pressmen to get the printing press up to the required quality of impression . Included in make-ready is the time taken to mount the plate onto the machine, clean up any mess from the previous job, and get the press up to speed. As soon as the pressman decides that the printing is correct, all the make-ready sheets will be discarded, and the press will start making books. Similar make readies take place in

3150-527: The Old English bōc , which in turn likely comes from the Germanic root * bōk- , cognate to " beech ". In Slavic languages like Russian , Bulgarian , Macedonian буква bukva —"letter" is cognate with "beech". In Russian , Serbian and Macedonian , the word букварь ( bukvar' ) or буквар ( bukvar ) refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master

3240-802: The Phoenicians brought writing and papyrus to Greece around the 10th or 9th century BC. Whether made from papyrus, parchment, or paper, scrolls were the dominant writing medium in the Hellenistic , Roman, Chinese, Hebrew , and Macedonian cultures. The codex dominated in the Roman world by late antiquity , but scrolls persisted much longer in Asia. The codex is the ancestor of the modern book, consisting of sheets of uniform size bound along one edge and typically held between two covers made of some more robust material. Isidore of Seville (died 636) explained

3330-467: The internet means that new information is often published online rather than in printed books, for example through a digital library . " Print on demand " technologies, which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made self-publishing (and vanity publishing ) much easier and more affordable, and has allowed publishers to keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print. Presently, books are typically produced by

3420-493: The watermarks present throughout the volume. In Gutenberg's time, inks used by scribes to produce manuscripts were water-based. Gutenberg developed an oil-based ink that would better adhere to his metal type. His ink was primarily carbon, but also had a high metallic content, with copper, lead, and titanium predominating. Head of collections at the British Library , Kristian Jensen, described it thus: "if you look [at

3510-441: The Gutenberg Bible was stolen from Moscow State University in 2009 and subsequently recovered in an FSB sting operation in 2013. Possession of a Gutenberg Bible by a library has been equated to keeping a "trophy book". Book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Modern books are typically in codex format, composed of many pages that are bound together and protected by

3600-798: The Mughal era in South Asia under the patronage of rulers like Akbar and Shah Jahan. Prior to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, made famous by the Gutenberg Bible , each text was a unique handcrafted valuable article, personalized through the design features incorporated by the scribe, owner, bookbinder, and illustrator. Its creation marked a pivotal moment for book production. Innovations like movable type and steam-powered presses accelerated manufacturing processes and contributed to increased literacy rates. Copyright protection also emerged, securing authors' rights and shaping

3690-441: The absence of make readies and of spoilage. Digital printing has opened up the possibility of print-on-demand, where no books are printed until after an order is received from a customer. After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery . In the middle of last century there were still many trade binders—stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in binding alone. At that time, because of

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3780-412: The bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback. Unsewn binding is now increasingly common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by " Smyth sewing " using needles, "McCain sewing", using drilled holes often used in schoolbook binding, or "notch binding", where gashes about an inch long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each signature. The rest of

3870-562: The binding of later books . Some fragments of the Gutenberg Bible are housed at... Today, few copies remain in religious institutions, with most now owned by university libraries and other major scholarly institutions. After centuries in which all copies seem to have remained in Europe, the first Gutenberg Bible reached North America in 1847. It is now in the New York Public Library. In the last hundred years, several long-lost copies have come to light, considerably improving

3960-399: The binding process is similar in all instances. Sewn and notch bound books can be bound as either hardbacks or paperbacks. "Making cases" happens off-line and prior to the book's arrival at the binding line. In the most basic case-making, two pieces of cardboard are placed onto a glued piece of cloth with a space between them into which is glued a thinner board cut to the width of the spine of

4050-402: The book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book can reveal its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of such evidence can leave valuable clues about the nature of

4140-531: The book was printed on larger paper measuring 44.5 cm × 30.7 cm (17.5 in × 12.1 in), but this assertion is contradicted by the dimensions of existing copies. For example, the leaves of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford , measure 40 cm × 28.6 cm (15.7 in × 11.3 in). This is typical of other folio Bibles printed on Royal paper in the fifteenth century. Most fifteenth-century printing papers have

4230-430: The book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a leaf refers to the single piece of paper, whereas

4320-518: The book. The overlapping edges of the cloth (about 5/8" all round) are folded over the boards, and pressed down to adhere. After case-making the stack of cases will go to the foil stamping area for adding decorations and type. Bookselling is the commercial trading of books that forms the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and book design whereby books and other texts are made available in alternative formats designed to aid or replace

4410-631: The books, including marketing and promotion. Each of these steps is usually taken on by third-party companies paid by the publisher. This is in contrast to self-publishing , where an author pays for the production and distribution of their own work and manages some or all steps of the publishing process. English-language publishing is currently dominated by the so-called "Big Five" publishers: Penguin Random House , Hachette Book Group , HarperCollins , Simon & Schuster , and Macmillan Publishers . They were estimated to make up almost 60 percent of

4500-785: The column. To do this, he used various methods, including using characters of narrower widths, adding extra spaces around punctuation, and varying the widths of spaces around words. Initially the rubrics—the headings before each book of the Bible—were printed, but this practice was quickly abandoned at an unknown date, and gaps were left for rubrication to be added by hand. A guide of the text to be added to each page, printed for use by rubricators, survives. The spacious margin allowed illuminated decoration to be added by hand. The amount of decoration presumably depended on how much each buyer could or would pay. Some copies were never decorated. The place of decoration can be known or inferred for about 30 of

4590-557: The direction of Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya , the HUMI team has made digital reproductions of 11 sets of the bible in nine institutions, including both full-text facsimiles held in the collection of the British Library . The last sale of a complete Gutenberg Bible took place in 1978, which sold for $ 2.4 million. This copy is now in Austin, Texas. The price of a complete copy today is estimated at $ 25−35 million. A two-volume paper edition of

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4680-458: The dominance of letterpress printing, typesetting and printing took place in one location, and binding in a different factory. When type was all metal, a typical book's worth of type would be bulky, fragile and heavy. The less it was moved in this condition the better: so printing would be carried out in the same location as the typesetting. Printed sheets on the other hand could easily be moved. Now, because of increasing computerization of preparing

4770-687: The earliest written records were made on tablets. Clay tablets (flattened pieces of clay impressed with a stylus ) were used in the Ancient Near East throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age , especially for writing in cuneiform . Wax tablets (pieces of wood covered in a layer of wax) were used in classical antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages . The custom of binding several wax tablets together (Roman pugillares )

4860-665: The edition, and that either 158 or 180 copies had been printed. The 36-line Bible , said to be the second printed Bible, is also sometimes referred to as a Gutenberg Bible, but may be the work of another printer. The Gutenberg Bible, an edition of the Vulgate , contains the Latin version of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament . It is mainly the work of St Jerome who began his work on

4950-483: The end of each authored chapter). The inside back cover page, like that inside the front cover, is usually blank. The back cover is the usual place for the book's ISBN and maybe a photograph of the author(s)/ editor(s), perhaps with a short introduction to them. Also here often appear plot summaries, barcodes and excerpted reviews of the book. The body of the books is usually divided into parts, chapters, sections and sometimes subsections that are composed of at least

5040-589: The end of the Middle Ages, the papal library in Avignon and Paris library of the Sorbonne held only around 2,000 volumes. The rise of universities in the 13th century led to an increased demand for books, and a new system for copying appeared. The books were divided into unbound leaves ( pecia ), which were lent out to different copyists, so the speed of book production was considerably increased. The system

5130-877: The first and third Eggestein Bibles. The third Eggestein Bible was set from the copy of the Gutenberg Bible now in Cambridge University Library . The Gutenberg Bible also had an influence on the Clementine edition of the Vulgate commissioned by the Papacy in the late sixteenth century. Joseph Martini, a New York book dealer, found that the Gutenberg Bible held by the library of the General Theological Seminary in New York had

5220-403: The first volume ending with The Book of Psalms . Copies on vellum were heavier and for this reason were sometimes bound in three or four volumes. The Bible seems to have sold out immediately, with some initial purchases as far away as England and possibly Sweden and Hungary. At least some copies are known to have sold for 30 florins (equivalent to about 100 grams or 3.5 ounces of gold ), which

5310-424: The folding and binding areas, each involving spoilage of paper. Recent developments in book manufacturing include the development of digital printing. Book pages are printed, in much the same way as an office copier works, using toner rather than ink. Each book is printed in one pass, not as separate signatures. Digital printing has permitted the manufacture of much smaller quantities than offset, in part because of

5400-526: The format was more economical than the scroll, as both sides of the writing material can be used; and it was portable, searchable, and easier to conceal. The Christian authors may also have wanted to distinguish their writings from the pagan and Judaic texts written on scrolls. The codices of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica had the same form as the European codex, but were instead made with long folded strips of either fig bark ( amatl ) or plant fibers, often with

5490-464: The future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, being displayed to promote the edition, in Frankfurt. It is not known how many copies were printed, with the 1455 letter citing sources for both 158 and 180 copies. Scholars today think that examination of surviving copies suggests that somewhere between 160 and 185 copies were printed, with about three-quarters on paper and

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5580-488: The high standards achieved in the production of the Gutenberg Bible, some describing it as one of the most beautiful books ever printed. The quality of both the ink and other materials and the printing itself have been noted. The paper size is 'double folio', with two pages printed on each side (four pages per sheet). After printing the paper was folded once to the size of a single page. Typically, five of these folded sheets (ten leaves, or twenty printed pages) were combined to

5670-650: The history of engraving," was partly responsible for the illumination of the copy held by the Princeton University library. However, all that can be said for certain is that the same model book was used for some of the illustrations in this copy and for some of the Master's illustrated playing cards. Although many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, nine copies retain fifteenth-century bindings . Most of these copies were bound in either Mainz or Erfurt . Most copies were divided into two volumes,

5760-893: The industry. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the English-speaking world, except for the US. The European book manufacturing industry works to a completely different set of standards. Hardcover books have a stiff binding, while paperback books have cheaper, flexible covers which tend to be less durable. Publishers may produce low-cost pre-publication copies known as galleys or "bound proofs" for promotional purposes, such as generating reviews in advance of publication. Galleys are usually made as cheaply as possible, since they are not intended for sale. Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. with fewer copies) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but most books are now printed on web presses , which are fed by

5850-470: The invention and widespread adoption of print. Advances were made in the techniques used to create them. In the early Western Roman Empire , monasteries continued Latin writing traditions related to Christianity , and the clergy were the predominant readers and copyists. The bookmaking process was long and laborious. They were usually written on parchment or vellum , writing surfaces made from processed animal skin. The parchment had to be prepared, then

5940-425: The late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once. There have been numerous improvements in the printing press. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year. During the 20th century, libraries faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion . The advent of electronic publishing and

6030-401: The market for general-readership books in 2021. Book design is the art of incorporating the content, style, format, design, and sequence of the various elements of a book into a coherent unit. Modern books are organized according to a particular format called the book's layout . Although there is great variation in layout, modern books tend to adhere to a set of rules with regard to what

6120-402: The others on vellum . In a legal paper, written after completion of the Bible, Johannes Gutenberg refers to the process as Das Werk der Bücher ("the work of the books"). He had introduced the printing press to Europe and created the technology to make printing with movable types finally efficient enough to facilitate the mass production of entire books. Many book-lovers have commented on

6210-426: The pages of The Gutenberg Bible] closely you will see this is a very shiny surface. When you write you use a water-based ink, you put your pen into it and it runs off. Now if you print that's exactly what you don't want. One of Gutenberg's inventions was an ink which wasn't ink, it's a varnish . So what we call printer's ink is actually a varnish, and that means it sticks to its surface." Each unique character requires

6300-433: The parts of the layout are and what their content usually includes. A basic layout will include a front cover , a back cover and the book's content which is called its body copy or content pages . The front cover often bears the book's title (and subtitle, if any) and the name of its author or editor(s). The inside front cover page is usually left blank in both hardcover and paperback books. The next section, if present,

6390-478: The popularity of ereaders and accessibility features. While discussions about the potential decline of physical books have surfaced, print media has proven remarkably resilient, continuing to thrive as a multi-billion dollar industry. Additionally, efforts to make literature more inclusive emerged, with the development of Braille for the visually impaired and the creation of spoken books, providing alternative ways for individuals to access and enjoy literature. Some of

6480-403: The printed area of the page. Finally, the print run was increased, necessitating resetting those pages which had already been printed. The new sheets were all reset to 42 lines per page. Consequently, there are two distinct settings in folios 1–32 and 129–158 of volume I and folios 1–16 and 162 of volume II. The most reliable information about the Bible's date comes from a letter. In March 1455,

6570-419: The printing process. Some time later, after more sheets had been printed, the number of lines per page was increased from 40 to 42, presumably to save paper. Therefore, pages 1 to 9 and pages 256 to 265, presumably the first ones printed, have 40 lines each. Page 10 has 41, and from there on the 42 lines appear. The increase in line number was achieved by decreasing the interline spacing , rather than increasing

6660-400: The publishing landscape. The Late Modern Period introduced chapbooks , catering to a wider range of readers, and mechanization of the printing process further enhanced efficiency. The 20th century witnessed the advent of typewriters, computers, and desktop publishing, transforming document creation and printing. Digital advancements in the 21st century led to the rise of ebooks, propelled by

6750-426: The reading process. It is particularly relevant for people who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled . Alternative formats that have been developed to aid different people to read include varieties of larger fonts , specialized fonts for certain kinds of reading disabilities , braille, ebooks, and automated audiobooks and DAISY digital talking books. Section (bookbinding) The section

6840-577: The same block. Techniques such as engraving , etching , and lithography have also been influential. The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early 20th century. While there was more mechanization , a book printer in 1900 still used movable metal type assembled into words, lines, and pages to create copies. Modern paper books are printed on paper designed specifically for printing . Traditionally, book papers are off-white or low-white papers (easier to read), are opaque to minimize

6930-445: The show-through of text from one side of the page to the other and are (usually) made to tighter caliper or thickness specifications, particularly for case-bound books. Different paper qualities are used depending on the type of book: Machine finished coated papers , woodfree uncoated papers , coated fine papers and special fine papers are common paper grades. Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography . When

7020-411: The spine, done in such a way that two or more stretches of thread are visible along each gathering's innermost fold. In medieval manuscripts, a gathering, or quire , was most often formed of four folded sheets of vellum or parchment , i.e. 8 leaves, 16 sides. The term quaternion (or sometimes quaternum ) designates such a unit. A gathering made of a single folded sheet (i.e. two leaves, four sides)

7110-645: The surviving copies. It is possible that 13 of these copies received their decoration in Mainz, but others were worked on as far away as London. The vellum Bibles were more expensive, and perhaps for this reason tend to be more highly decorated, although the vellum copy in the British Library is completely undecorated. There has been speculation that the " Master of the Playing Cards ", an unidentified engraver who has been called "the first personality in

7200-537: The techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood. The Latin word codex , meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant "block of wood". An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile , or colloquially a "bookworm". In its modern incarnation, a book is typically composed of many pages (commonly of paper , parchment , or vellum ) that are bound together along one edge and protected by

7290-715: The term has changed substantially over time with the evolution of communication media. Historian of books James Raven has suggested that when studying how books have been used to communicate, they should be defined in a broadly inclusive way as "portable, durable, replicable and legible" means of recording and disseminating information, rather than relying on physical or contextual features. This would include, for example, ebooks, newspapers , and quipus (a form of knot-based recording historically used by cultures in Andean South America ), but not objects fixed in place such as inscribed monuments. A stricter definition

7380-401: The then-current relation between a codex, book, and scroll in his Etymologiae (VI.13): "A codex is composed of many books; a book is of one scroll. It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks ( codex ) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches". The first written mention of the codex as a form of book

7470-519: The translation in AD 380, with emendations from the Parisian Bible tradition, and further divergences. While it is unlikely that any of Gutenberg's early publications would bear his name, the initial expense of press equipment and materials and of the work to be done before the Bible was ready for sale suggests that he may have started with more lucrative texts, including several religious documents,

7560-508: The type based on a matrix and hand mould . This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available. Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula . Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 19th century. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour. Monotype and linotype typesetting machines were introduced in

7650-449: The unbound pages were planned and ruled with a blunt tool or lead, after which the text was written by a scribe , who usually left blank areas for illustration and rubrication . Finally, it was bound by a bookbinder. Because of the difficulties involved in making and copying books, they were expensive and rare. Smaller monasteries usually had only a few dozen books. By the 9th century, larger collections held around 500 volumes and even at

7740-450: The understanding of how the Bible was produced and distributed. In 1921 a New York rare book dealer, Gabriel Wells , bought a damaged paper copy, dismantled the book and sold sections and individual leaves to book collectors and libraries. The leaves were sold in a portfolio case with an essay written by A. Edward Newton , and were referred to as "Noble Fragments". In 1953 Charles Scribner's Sons , also book dealers in New York, dismembered

7830-537: Was about three years' wages for a clerk . Although this made them significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles, most students, priests or other people of moderate income would not have been able to afford them. It is assumed that most were sold to monasteries, universities and particularly wealthy individuals. At present only one copy is known to have been privately owned in the fifteenth century. Some are known to have been used for communal readings in monastery refectories; others may have been for display rather than use, and

7920-431: Was maintained by secular stationers guilds, which produced both religious and non-religious material. In India, bound manuscripts made of birch bark or palm leaf had existed since antiquity. The text in palm leaf manuscripts was inscribed with a knife pen on rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheets; coloring was then applied to the surface and wiped off, leaving the ink in the incised grooves. Each sheet typically had

8010-601: Was sold for US$ 2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart , Germany. As of 2009, 49 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist, but of these only 21 are complete. Others have pages or even whole volumes missing. In addition, there are a substantial number of fragments, some as small as individual leaves, which are likely to represent about another 16 copies. Many of these fragments have survived because they were used as part of

8100-506: Was subsequently discovered in Mons, Belgium, having been bequeathed by Edmond Puissant to the city in 1934. The only copy held outside Europe and North America is the first volume of a Gutenberg Bible (Hubay 45) at Keio University in Tokyo. The Humanities Media Interface Project (HUMI) at Keio University is known for its high-quality digital images of Gutenberg Bibles and other rare books. Under

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