Books and Publishers
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Wikipedia-Article "Books"
- This page is about bound sheets of paper. For the graph theory concept, see Book (graph theory). For the musical theater meaning, see Book (musical theater).
A book is a collection of leaves of paper, parchment or other material, bound together along one edge within covers. A book is also a literary work or a main division of such a work. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book.
In library and information science, a book is called a monograph to distinguish it from serial publications such as magazines, journals or newspapers.
Publishers may produce low-cost, pre-proof editions known as galleys 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.
A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm.
A book may be studied by students in the form of a book report. It may also be covered by a professional writer as a book review to introduce a new book.
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History
The oral account (word of mouth, tradition, hearsay) is the oldest carrier of messages and stories. When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, clay tablets or parchment scrolls were used as, for example, in the library of Alexandria.
Scrolls were later phased out in favor of the codex, a bound book with pages and a spine, the form of most books today. The codex was invented in the first few centuries A.D. or earlier. Some have said that Julius Caesar invented the first codex during the Gallic Wars. He would issue scrolls folded up accordion style and use the "pages" as reference points.
Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books comparatively expensive and rare. During the early Middle Ages, when only churches, universities, and rich noblemen could typically afford books, they were often chained to a bookshelf or a desk to prevent theft. The first books used parchment or vellum (calf skin) for the pages, which was later replaced with paper.
In the mid 15th century books began to be produced by block printing in western Europe (the technique had been known in the East centuries earlier). In block printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved out of wood. It could then be inked and used to reproduce many copies of that page. Creating an entire book, however, was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page. Also, the wood blocks were not terribly durable and could easily wear out or crack.
The oldest dated book printed by the method of block printing is The Diamond Sutra. There is a wood block printed copy in the British Library which, although not the earliest example of block printing, is the earliest example which bears an actual date. It was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein in a walled-up cave near Dunhuang, in northwest China. The colophon, at the inner end, reads: Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11th May, CE 868 ].
The Chinese inventor Pi Sheng made moveable type of earthenware circa 1045, but we have no surviving examples of his printing. He embedded the characters, face up, in a shallow tray lined with warm wax. He laid a board across them and pressed it down until all the characters were at exactly the same level. When the wax cooled he used his letter tray to print whole pages.
It was not until Johann Gutenberg popularized the printing press with metal moveable type in the 15th century that books started to be affordable and widely available. This upset the status quo, leading to remarks such as "The printing press will allow books to get into the hands of people who have no business reading books." It is estimated that in Europe about 1,000 various books were created per year before the invention of the printing press.
With the rise of printing in the fifteenth century, books were published in limited numbers and were quite valuable. The need to protect these precious commodities was evident. One of the earliest references to the use of bookmarks was in 1584 when the Queen's Printer, Christopher Barker, presented Queen Elizabeth I with a fringed silk bookmark. Common bookmarks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were narrow silk ribbons bound into the book at the top of the spine and extended below the lower edge of the page. The first detachable bookmarks began appearing in the 1850's and were made from silk or embroidered fabrics. Not until the 1880's, did paper and other materials become more common.
The following centuries were 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, Europe book production has risen to over 200,000 titles per year.
Structure of book
- Main article: Book design
Depending of book's purpose or type (i.e. Encyclopedia , Dictionary, Textbook, Monograph) structure could vary, but some common (traditional) structural parts of the book usually are:
- Book cover (hard or soft, fancy-looking, with illustration)
- Title page (shows title and author, often with small illustration or icon)
- Metrics page
- (sometimes - dedication page)
- Table of contents
- Preface
- Text of contents of that book
- Index (publishing)
- Back cover (hard or soft, fancy-looking, with illustration)
Conservation issues
In the mid-19th century, papers made from pulp (cellulose, wood) were introduced because it was cheaper than cloth-based papers (i.e. vellum or parchment). Pulp based paper made cheap novels, cheap school text books and cheap books of all kinds available to the general public. This paved the way for huge leaps in the rate of literacy in industrialised nations and eased the spread of information during the Second Industrial Revolution.
However, this pulp paper contained acid that causes a sort of slow fires that eventually destroys the paper from within. Earlier techniques for making paper used limestone rollers which neutralized the acid in the pulp. Libraries today have to consider mass deacidification of their older collections. Books printed from 1850-1950 are at risk; more recent books are often printed on acid-free or alkaline paper.
The proper care of books takes into account the possibility of chemical changes to the cover and text. Books are best stored in reduced lighting, definitely out of direct sunlight, at cool temperatures, and at moderate humidity. Books, especially heavy ones, need the support of surrounding volumes to maintain their shape. It is desirable for that reason to group books by size.
Collections of books
Maintaining a library used to be the privilege of princes, the wealthy, monasteries and other religious institutions, and universities. The growth of a public library system in the United States started in the late 19th century and was much helped by donations from Andrew Carnegie. This reflected classes in a society: The poor or the middle class had to share most books through a public library or by other means while the rich could afford to have a private library built into their homes.
The advent of paperback books in the 20th century led to an explosion of popular publishing. Paperback books made owning books affordable for many people. Paperback books often included works from genres that had previously been published mostly in pulp magazines. As a result of the low cost of such books and the spread of bookstores filled with them (in addition to the creation of a smaller market of extremely cheap used paperbacks) owning a private library ceased to be a status symbol for the rich.
While a small collection of books, or one to be used by a small number of people, can be stored in any way convenient to the owners, a large or public collection requires a catalogue and some means of consulting it. Often codes or other marks have to be added to the books to speed the process of relating them to the catalogue and their correct shelf position. Where these identify a volume uniquely, they are referred to as "call numbers". In large libraries this call number is usually based on a Library classification system. The call number is placed inside the book and on the spine of the book, normally a short distance before the bottom, in accordance with institutional or national standards such as ANSI/NISO Z39.41 - 1997. This short (7 pages) standard also establishes the correct way to place information (such as the title or the name of the author) on book spines and on "shelvable" book-like objects such as containers for DVDs, video tapes and software.
In library and booksellers' catalogues, it is common to include an abbreviation such as "Crown 8vo" to indicate the paper size from which the book is made.
When rows of books are lined on a bookshelf, bookends are sometimes needed to keep them from slanting.
Keeping track of books
One of the earliest and most widely known systems of cataloguing books is the Dewey Decimal System. This system has fallen out of use in some places, mainly because of a Eurocentric bias and other difficulties applying the system to modern libraries. However, it is still used by most public libraries in America. Another popular classification system is the Library of Congress system, which is more popular in university libraries.
All books of the world are said to constitute the Gutenberg Galaxy, or, to use a term coined by eBook author Rick Sutcliffe in the early 1980s, the Metalibrary.
For the entire 20th century most librarians concerned with offering proper library services to the public (or a smaller subset such as students) worried about keeping track of the books being added yearly to the Gutenberg Galaxy. Through a global society called the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) they devised a series of tools such as the International Standard Book Description or ISBD.
Besides, each book is specified by a International Standard Book Number, or ISBN, which is unique to every book produced by participating publishers, world wide. It is managed by the ISBN Society. It has four parts. The first part is the country code, the second the publisher code, and the third the title code. The last part is a checksum or a check digit and can take values from 0-9 and X (10). The EAN Barcodes numbers for books are derived from the ISBN by prefixing 978, for Bookland and calculating a new check digit.
Many government publishers, in industrial countries as well as in developing countries, do not participate fully in the ISBN system. They often produce books which do not have ISBNs. In certain industrialized countries large classes of commercial books, such as novels, textbooks and other non-fiction books, are nearly always given ISBNs by publishers, thus giving the illusion to many customers that the ISBN is an international and complete system, with no exceptions.
Transition to digital format
The term e-book (electronic book) in the broad sense is an amount of information like a conventional book, but in digital form. It is made available through internet, CD-ROM, etc. In the popular press the term eBook sometimes refers to a device such as the Sony Librie EBR-1000EP, which is meant to read the digital form and present it to a human being.
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 e.g. through a digital library, on CD-ROM, or in the form of e-books.
On the other hand, though books are nowadays produced using a digital version of the content, for most books such a version is not available to the public (i.e. neither in the library nor on internet), 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. The 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 have made it easier for less known authors to make their work available to a larger audience.
Related articles and lists
- Author
- Bookbinding
- Bookselling
- List of books by title
- List of books by author
- List of books by genre or type
- List of books by award or notoriety
- List of books by year of publication
- List of banned books
- List of fictional books
- Metasearch engine sites search multiple online bookstore sites. Some require separate searches for new or used books.
- Online bookstores
Online book databases and lists
- The Internet Book Database of Fiction
- Internet Book List
- ISBNdb.com, books database built from libraries data
External links
Wikipedia-Article "Publishers"
Publishing is the industry of the production of literature or information - the activity of putting information for public view. Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include websites, blogs, and other forms of new media. As a business, publishing includes the development, marketing, production, and distribution of news and non-fiction magazines and books, literary works, musical works, software, other works dealing with information.
This article is concerned with the production of books, magazines, and other literary material (whether in printed or electronic formats). The publication of software is covered in software publishing.
Publication is also important as a legal concept; (1) as the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention, for example, to marry or enter bankruptcy, and; (2) as the essential precondition of being able to claim defamation; that is, the alleged libel must have been published.
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Process of publishing
A modern book or periodical publisher is the gateway through which authors must pass to see their work in print, whether physically such as on paper. or electronic. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.
Content
- Author/agent submission Publishers spend a significant proportion of their time buying or commissioning content. At a small press, it is possible to survive by relying entirely on commissioned material but, as activity increases, the need for content may outstrip the publisher's established circle of authors, so the door is open for others to submit material for consideration. The majority of unsolicited submissions come from previously unpublished authors. Such manuscripts must go through the slush pile, in which acquisitions editors sift through to identify manuscripts of sufficient quality or revenue potential to be referred to the editorial staff. Authors who are represented by a literary agent are more likely to succeed with major publishers. Publishers thrive only when they are able to produce and sell books that match the needs of the target readers.
- Acceptance/negotiation Once a work is accepted, the commissioning editors negotiate the purchase of intellectual property (IP) rights and agree on royalty rates.
- The authors of traditional printed materials sell exclusive territorial IP rights that match the list of states in which distribution is proposed (i.e. the rights match the legal systems under which copyright protections can be enforced). In the case of books, the publisher must also agree on the intended formats of publication — mass market paperback, trade paperback and hardback are the most common options.
- The situation is slightly more complex if electronic formatting is to be used. Where distribution is to be by CD-R or other physical media, there is no reason to treat this form differently from a hard-copy format and a territorial copyright is an acceptable approach. But the possibility of internet download without the ability to restrict physical distribution within national boundaries presents legal problems that are usually solved by selling language/translation rights rather than territorial rights. Thus, internet access across the European Union is relatively open because of the laws forbidding discrimination based on nationality, but the fact of publication in, say, French, limits the target market to those who read French.
- Having agreed on the scope of the publication and the formats, the parties must then agree royalty rates, i.e. the percentage of the gross retail price that will be paid to the author. This is a difficult risk management exercise because the publisher must estimate the potential sales in each market and balance projected revenue against production costs.
- Editorial stage Once the immediate commercial decisions are taken and the technical legal issues resolved, the author may be asked to improve the quality of the work through rewrite(s) or the in-house staff will edit the work. Almost all publishers operate a house style, and staff will copy edit to ensure that the work matches the style and grammatical requirements of each market.
- Pre-press When a final text is agreed, the next phases are design. This may include artwork being commissioned or confirmation of layout. This process prepares the work for printing through processes such as typesetting, dust jacket composition, specification of paper quality, binding method and casing, and proofreading. The activities of typesetting, page layout, the production of negatives, plates from the negatives and, for hardbacks, the preparation of brasses for the spine legend and imprint are now all computerised. The final act before sending the work to the printer is to output the PostScript files. If the target is electronic distribution, the final files are saved as PDF files or other formats appropriate to the target operating systems of the hardware used for reading.
Business
The publisher usually controls the advertising and other marketing tasks, but may subcontract various aspects of the process described above. In smaller companies, editing, proof-reading and layout might be done by freelancers. Dedicated in-house sales forces for books are rapidly being replaced by specialised companies who handle sales to bookshops, wholesalers and chain stores for a fee. This trend is accelerating as retail book chains and supermarkets have centralised their buying. If the entire process up to the stage of printing is handled by an outside company or individuals, and then sold to the publishing company, it is known as book packaging. This is a common strategy between smaller publishers in different territorial markets where the company that first buys the IP Rights, sells a package to other publishers and gains an immediate return on capital invested. Indeed, the first publisher will often print sufficient copies for all territories and thereby obtain the maximum quantity discounts on the print run for all.
Any company will maximise its profit margin through vertical integration. Although newspaper and magazine companies still often own printing presses and binderies, book publishers rarely do. Similarly, the trade usually sells the finished products through a distributor who stores and distributes the publisher's wares for a percentage fee or sells on a sale or return basis. The advent of the internet has therefore posed an interesting question to the publishers, the distributors and the retailers. In 2005, Amazon.com announced its purchase of Booksurge, a major Print On Demand (P.O.D) operation. This is probably intended as a preliminary move towards establishing an Amazon imprint. One of the largest bookseller chains, Barnes & Noble, already runs its own successful imprint with both new titles and Classics — hardback editions of out-of-print former best sellers. Similarly, Ingram Book Company, the world’s largest book wholesaler, having flirted with Barnes & Noble, now includes its own P.O.D. division called Lighting Source. From the publishers, Simon & Schuster recently announced that it will start selling its backlist titles directly to consumers through its website. Perseus, one of the largest independent publishers, also announced its purchase of Client Distribution Services, a company that distributes titles by independent publishers. Book clubs are almost entirely direct-to-retail, and niche publishers pursue a mixed strategy to sell through all available outlets — their output is insignificant to the major booksellers and so lost business is no threat to the traditional symbiotic relationships between the four activities of printing, publishing, distribution and retail.
Academic publishing
- Main article: Academic publishing
The development of the printing press represented a revolution for communicating the latest hypotheses and research results to the academic community and supplemented what a scholar could do personally. Ironically, this improvement in the efficiency of communication created a challenge for libraries which have had to accommodate the weight and volume of literature.
To understand the scale of the problem: about two centuries ago, the number of scientific papers published annually was doubling approximately every fifteen years. Today, the number of published papers doubles about every ten years. Modern academics can now run electronic journals and distribute academic materials without the need for publishers. Not surprisingly, publishers perceive this emancipation as a serious threat to their business model. In reality, the interests of scholars and publishers have long been in conflict. The purpose of copyright is to protect the capital invested in the "work" by the publisher and the wish of the scholar is to have the work as widely distributed as possible.
Today, publishing academic journals and textbooks is a large part of an international industry. The shares of the major publishing companies are listed on national stock exchanges and management policies must satisfy the dividend expectations of international shareholders. Critics claim that these standardised accounting and profit-oriented policies have come to the fore and now constrain more altruistic leanings. An alternative to the corporate model is open access, the online distribution of individual articles and academic journals without charge to readers and libraries.
Tie-in publishing
Technically, radio, television, cinemas, VCDs and DVDs, music systems, games machines, computer hardware and mobile telephony publish information to those who watch and/or listen. Indeed, the marketing of a major film will require a novelisation, a graphic novel or comic version, the soundtrack album, a game, model, toys and endless promotional publications (including SMS messages). Some of the major publishers have entire divisions devoted to a single franchise, e.g. Ballantine Del Rey Lucasbooks has the exclusive rights to Star Wars in the U.S; Random House UK(Bertelsmann)/Century LucasBooks holds the same rights in the UK. The gaming industry self-publishes through BL Publishing/Black Library (Warhammer) and Wizards of the Coast (DragonLance, Forgotten Realms, etc). The BBC has its own publishing division which does very well with long-running series such as Doctor Who. These multi-media works are cross-marketed aggressively and sales frequently outperform the average stand-alone published work making them a focus of corporate interest.
Criticism of the publishing industry
There has been some controversy in recent times over what is perceived as a crisis in Western publishing. The general complaint is that conglomerates or large corporations have bought and merged a significant number of key publishing houses or bookstores. Consequently, an oligopoly is arising and now exercises more real influence over various aspects of publishing. It is suggested that there has been some reduction in competition but there is no reduction in the number of titles published in the national markets. This is not to deny that consolidation has produced a number of consequences:
- The corporations have concentrated on their big name authors, attempting to drive up the market share of a bestseller.
- Editorial policy now requires imprints to keep fewer authors under contract — this has resulted in economic insecurity for the midlist authors who previously enjoyed stability of employment;
- Companies now wish to extend the payment schedule for the payment of author royalties — in part this is a response to the demands of the retail trade for extended periods of credit, but it also maximises the amount of circulating capital available to the publisher;
- Critics claim that these events have led to the following problems:
- Not only a loss of diversity in the range of authors published in mass market outlets, but also to a decline in the quality of a bestseller as most of the middle and lower level authors must have other employment to provide income while writing the work and waiting for the royalties.
- The consolidation of companies has also made it easier to impose a political bias on the works released by the commercial publishers based in New York.
- There is an excess of transient in the mass market, a bestseller is often used as promotional tools for a possible movie deal.
Independent publishing alternatives
In spite of the fact that middle and lower level authors now need to keep a day job, they have managed to find smaller alternatives to the mass market in the form of small press such as self-publishing, print on demand, and through the eBook format as well. Even though there is little market exposure in addition to the royalty checks that are few and far between, these publishing alternatives provide an avenue that expresses diversity in styles and political views that the mass markets haven't seen in the last 10-15 years.
Rather than try to write a bestseller, most of these small press authors shoot for the long range goal of writing the Great American Novel.
References
- Schiffrin, André (2000). The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read.
- Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future.
- Ugrešić, Dubravka (2003). Thank You for Not Reading.
See also
- academic publishing
- concentration of media ownership
- copy editing
- desktop publishing
- editor
- electronic publishing
- freedom of speech
- house style
- mass media
- open-access publishing
- proofreading
- self-publishing
- typesetting
- word processing
- writing
External links
- Book-Busters: Corporate Consolidation in Book Publishing and Selling and the Decline of Diversity by William Petrocelli (1999)
- Crisis in Scholarly Publishing: Executive Summary, by Stephen Boyd and Andrew Herkovic (1999)
- The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing
- The Crisis in Scholarly Communication
- The Crisis in Scientific Publishing
- LanguageMonitor Media Metrics and Analysis
- Magazine Publishing Startup Resource Web Site for Publishers
- A Report to the Authors Guild which reveals a "Crisis in Midlist Publishing": Study (PDF file)
- Understanding the Economic Burden of Scholarly Publishing By Cathy N. Davidson
- Articles freely available online are more highly cited