The earliest examples of printed works were from China and Korea, printed by using wood blocks. Eventually, mass printing developed and by 1500, there were more than twenty million books printed in Western Europe. These books have the special name of incunabula.
Over the following centuries, it was rather the design of printing improved rather than the technology itself. For example, printers began to differentiate text by printing in different sizes and began to use new formatting such as page numbers and chapter headings.
Printing Processes
Printing has a number of specific processes, including typesetting and lithography. Typesetting is the name given to the reproduction of text. Using wooden or metal letter stamps, text from the page was prepared in reverse. These would then have ink rolled over them and be pressed to the paper. Not only was the text now printed, it was also be the correct way round. Even though this process is now digital, typesetting remains an important part of printing, as its principals still help to determine the layout of a book for printing.
Lithography, or Litho printing, is the one of the main commercial printing processes and it relies on the properties of grease and water to print onto paper. Using a process similar to that of developing camera film, text and pictures are ‘printed’ onto the surface of a metal cylinder called the printing plate. When ink flows over the printing plate, it attaches to the text. Water also runs through and keeps the spaces around the text free from ink. The ink on the printing plate transfers onto a blanket cylinder (which is rubber) and this then rolls over the paper as it passes.
Printing Runs
Most publishing companies concentrate on different runs of printing, such as short, medium or long. A short run is usually less than one thousand copies and the size of the run obviously depends on how many copies of the book are required for marketing.
Paperback Printing
Penguin published the first paperback in 1935 and there are still many millions of paperbacks printed every year. Paperback printing is usually considerably cheaper than hardback printing although hardbacks will generally offer a larger profit margin. Whichever type of book is printed, once the pages and their covers are fastened together, they are packaged ready for distribution to retailers, purchasers etc.
If a paperback is for sale without a front cover, it means that the seller has returned the cover to the publisher for a refund. Therefore, if this book is sold, the author will not receive any loyalties from the sale of that book.
Recently, Amazon announced that for every 100 paperbacks it sells through Amazon.com, it now sells 115 Kindle eBooks. In the UK in 2011, sales of hardbacks decreased as sales of eBooks increased. This has led to even greater speculation about the demise of the traditional printed book.
Print On Demand (POD)
There are a number of self publishing companies now available as well as publishers that print on demand (POD). These publishers are able to print a specific number of copies for a set amount, usually negotiated beforehand. POD services are becoming popular because they offer everyone the opportunity to see their work in print.