A
book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book (e-book).
Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels
and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book
may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1,
Book 2, Book 3, and so on). A lover of books is usually referred to as a
bibliophile, a bibliophile, or a philologist, or, more informally, a bookworm.
A store where books are bought and sold is a bookstore or bookshop. Books can also be borrowed from libraries. In 2010, Google estimated that there were approximately 130 million distinct books in the world.
History of books
Antiquity
Sumerian language cuneiform script clay tablet, 2400–2200 BC
When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing. Alphabetic writing emerged in Egypt about 5,000 years ago. The Ancient Egyptians would often write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from each other (
scriptural continua) and there was no punctuation.
Texts were written from right to left, left to right, and even so that
alternate lines read in opposite directions. The technical term for this
type of writing is 'boustrophedon,' which means literally 'ox-turning' for the way a farmer drives an ox to plough his fields.
Movable type and incunabula
"Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Son Masters", the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type
of earthenware circa 1045, but there are no known surviving examples of
his printing. Around 1450, in what is commonly regarded as an
independent invention, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce, and more widely available.
A 15th century incunabulum. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses and clasps.
Early printed books, single sheets and images which were created before the year 1501 in Europe are known as incunabula.
A
man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look
back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million
books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had
produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330.
Modern world
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 the late 19th century. They
could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at
once.
The centuries after the 15th century were thus spent on improving both the printing press and the conditions for freedom of the press through the gradual relaxation of restrictive censorship laws. See also intellectual property, public domain, copyright. In mid-20th century, European book production had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.
Book manufacturing in the modern world
The spine
of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in the
cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, the
details on the spine is the only visible surface that contains the
information about the book. In stores, it is the details on the spine
that attract buyers' attention first.
The methods used for the printing and binding of books continued
fundamentally unchanged from the 15th century into the early years of
the 20th century. While there was of course more mechanization, Gutenberg would have had no difficulty in understanding what was going on if he had visited a book printer in 1900.
Gutenberg’s invention was the use of movable metal types, assembled into words, lines, and pages and then printed by letterpress. In letterpress printing ink
is spread onto the tops of raised metal type, and is transferred onto a
sheet of paper which is pressed against the type. Sheet-fed letterpress
printing is still available but tends to be used for collector’s books
and is now more of an art form than a commercial technique
Today, the majority of books are printed by offset lithography
in which an image of the material to be printed is photographically or
digitally transferred to a flexible metal plate where it is developed to
exploit the antipathy between grease
(the ink) and water. When the plate is mounted on the press, water is
spread over it. The developed areas of the plate repel water thus
allowing the ink to adhere to only those parts of the plate which are to
print. The ink is then offset onto a rubbery blanket (to prevent water
from soaking the paper) and then finally to the paper.
When 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. Trimming involves cutting
approximately 1/8” off top, bottom and fore-edge (the edge opposite to
the spine) as part of the binding process in order to remove the folds
so that the pages can be opened. The standard sizes result from sheet
sizes (therefore machine sizes) which became popular 200 or 300 years
ago, and have come to dominate the industry. The basic standard
commercial book sizes in the United States, always expressed as width × height, are: 4¼” × 7” (rack size paperback), 5⅛” × 7⅝” (digest size paperback),
5½” × 8¼”, 5½” × 8½”, 6⅛” × 9¼”, 7” × 10”, and 8½” × 11”. These
“standard” trim sizes will often vary slightly depending on the
particular printing presses used, and on the imprecision of the trimming
operation. Of course other trim sizes are available, and some publishers
favor sizes not listed here which they might nominate as “standard” as
well, such as 6” × 9”, 8” × 10”. In Britain the equivalent standard
sizes differ slightly, as well as now being expressed in millimeters,
and with height preceding width. Thus the UK equivalent of 6⅛” × 9¼” is
234 × 156 mm. British conventions in this regard prevail throughout the
English speaking world, except for USA. The European book manufacturing
industry works to a completely different set of standards.
Some books, particularly those with shorter runs (i.e. of which fewer
copies are to be made) will be printed on sheet-fed offset presses, but
most books are now printed on web presses, which are fed by a
continuous roll of paper, and can consequently print more copies in a
shorter time. On a sheet-fed press a stack of sheets of paper stands at
one end of the press, and each sheet passes through the press
individually. The paper will be printed on both sides and delivered,
flat, as a stack of paper at the other end of the press. These sheets
then have to be folded on another machine which uses bars, rollers and
cutters to fold the sheet up into one or more signatures. A signature is
a section of a book, usually of 32 pages, but sometimes 16, 48 or even
64 pages. After the signatures are all folded they are gathered: placed
in sequence in bins over a circulating belt onto which one signature
from each bin is dropped. Thus as the line circulates a complete “book”
is collected together in one stack, next to another, and another.
A web press
carries out the folding itself, delivering bundles of signatures ready
to go into the gathering line. Notice that when the book is being
printed it is being printed one (or two) signatures at a time, not one
complete book at a time. Thus if there are to be 10,000 copies printed,
the press will run 10,000 of the first form (the pages imaged onto the
first plate and its back-up plate, representing one or two signatures),
then 10,000 of the next form, and so on till all the signatures have
been printed. Actually, because there is a known average spoilage rate
in each of the steps in the book’s progress through the manufacturing
system, if 10,000 books are to be made, the printer will print between
10,500 and 11,000 copies so that subsequent spoilage will still allow
the delivery of the ordered quantity of books. Sources of spoilage tend
to be mainly make-readies.
A make-ready 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. The main part of making-ready is however getting the ink/water
balance right, and ensuring that the inking is even across the whole
width of the paper. This is done by running paper through the press and
printing waste pages while adjusting the press to improve quality. Densitometers
are used to ensure even inking and consistency from one form to
another. 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 the folding and binding
areas, each involving spoilage of paper.
After the signatures are folded and gathered, they move into the bindery.
In the middle of the last century there were still many trade binders –
stand-alone binding companies which did no printing, specializing in
binding alone. At that time, largely because of the dominance of
letterpress printing, the pattern of the industry was for typesetting
and printing to take 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 it was almost invariable that 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 the increasing computerization
of the process of preparing 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 the bindery will involve more points of activity than if it is a paperback.
A paperback binding line (a number of pieces of machinery linked by
conveyor belts) involves few steps. The gathered signatures, book
blocks, will be fed into the line where they will one by one be gripped
by plates converging from each side of the book, turned spine up and
advanced towards a gluing station. En route the spine of the book block
will be ground off leaving a roughened edge to the tightly gripped
collection of pages. The grinding leaves fibers which will grip onto the
glue which is then spread onto the spine of the book. Covers then meet
up with the book blocks, and one cover is dropped onto the glued spine
of each book block, and is pressed against the spine by rollers. The
book is then carried forward to the trimming station, where a
three-knife trimmer will simultaneously cut the top and bottom and the
fore-edge of the paperback to leave clear square edges. The books are
then packed into cartons, or packed on skids, and shipped.
Binding a hardback is more complicated. Look at a hardback book and
you will see the cover overlaps the pages by about 1/8” all round. These
overlaps are called squares. The blank piece of paper inside the cover
is called the endpaper, or endsheet: it is of somewhat stronger paper
than the rest of the book as it is the endpapers that hold the book into
the case. The endpapers will be tipped to the first and last signatures
before the separate signatures are placed into the bins on the
gathering line. Tipping involves spreading some glue along the spine
edge of the folded endpaper and pressing the endpaper against the
signature. The gathered signatures are then glued along the spine, and
the book block is trimmed, like the paperback, but will continue after
this to the rounder and backer. The book block together with its
endpapers will be gripped from the sides and passed under a roller with
presses it from side to side, smashing the spine down and out around the
sides so that the entire book takes on a rounded cross section: convex
on the spine, concave at the fore-edge, with “ears” projecting on either
side of the spine. Then the spine is glued again, a paper liner is
stuck to it and headbands and footbands are applied. Next a crash lining
(an open weave cloth somewhat like a stronger cheesecloth) is usually
applied, overlapping the sides of the spine by an inch or more. Finally
the inside of the case, which has been constructed and foil-stamped
off-line on a separate machine, is glued on either side (but not on the
spine area) and placed over the book block. This entire sandwich is now
gripped from the outside and pressed together to form a solid bond
between the endpapers and the inside of the case. The crash lining,
which is glued to the spine of the pages, but not the spine of the case,
is held between the endpapers and the case sides, and in fact provides
most of the strength holding the book block into the case. The book will
then be jacketed (most often by hand, allowing this stage to be an inspection stage also) before being packed ready for shipment.
The sequence of events can vary slightly, and usually the entire
sequence does not occur in one continuous pass through a binding line.
What has been described above is unsewn binding, now increasingly
common. The signatures of a book can also be held together by Smyth
sewing. Needles pass through the spine fold of each signature in
succession, from the outside to the center of the fold, sewing the pages
of the signature together and each signature to its neighbors. McCain
sewing, often used in schoolbook binding, involves drilling holes
through the entire book and sewing through all the pages from front to
back near the spine edge. Both of these methods mean that the folds in
the spine of the book will not be ground off in the binding line. This
is true of another technique, notch binding, where gashes about an inch
long are made at intervals through the fold in the spine of each
signature, parallel to the spine direction. In the binding line glue is
forced into these “notches” right to the center of the signature, so
that every pair of pages in the signature is bonded to every other one,
just as in the Smyth sewn book. The rest of 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 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. Metal dies, photoengraved
elsewhere, are mounted in the stamping machine and rolls of foil are
positioned to pass between the dies and the case to be stamped. Heat and
pressure cause the foil to detach from its backing and adhere to the
case. Foils come in various shades of gold and silver and in a variety
pigment colors, and by careful setup quite elaborate effects can be
achieved by using different rolls of foil on the one book. Cases can
also be made from paper which has been printed separately and then
protected with clear film lamination. A three-piece case is made
similarly but has a different material on the spine and overlapping onto
the sides: so it starts out as three pieces of material, one each of a
cheaper material for the sides and the different, stronger material for
the spine.
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 the absence of make
readies and of spoilage. One might think of a web press as printing
quantities over 2000, quantities from 250 to 2000 being printed on
sheet-fed presses, and digital presses doing quantities below 250. These
numbers are of course only approximate and will vary from supplier to
supplier, and from book to book depending on its characteristics.
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.
Digital format
The term e-book
is a contraction of "electronic book"; it refers to a digital version
of a conventional print book. An e-book is usually made available
through the internet, but also on CD-ROM and other forms. E-Books may be
read either via a computer or by means of a portable book display
device known as an e-book reader, such as the Sony Reader, Barnes &
Noble Nook or the
Amazon Kindle. These devices attempt to mimic the experience of reading a print book.
Throughout the 20th century, libraries have faced an ever-increasing rate of publishing, sometimes called an information explosion. The advent of electronic publishing and the Internet means that much new information is not printed in paper books, but is made available online through a digital library, on CD-ROM, or in the form of e-books. An on-line book is an e-book that is available online through the internet.
Though many books are produced digitally, most digital versions are
not available to the public, and there is no decline in the rate of
paper publishing. There is an effort, however, to convert books that are in the public domain into a digital medium for unlimited redistribution and infinite availability. This effort is spearheaded by Project Gutenberg combined with Distributed Proofreaders.
There have also been new developments in the process of publishing books. Technologies such as print on demand,
which make it possible to print as few as one book at a time, have made
self-publishing much easier and more affordable. On-demand publishing
has allowed publishers, by avoiding the high costs of warehousing, to
keep low-selling books in print rather than declaring them out of print.
8:25 AM
Data Science Ar
