Publishing as it is known today depends on a series of three major inventions- writing, paper, and printing; and one crucial social development, the spread of literacy. Before the invention of writing information could only be spread by word of mouth. The invention of printing transformed the possibilities of the written word. Printing seems to have been first invented in China in the 6th century A.D. in the form of block printing. Other Chinese inventions, including paper (A.D. 105), were passed on to Europe by the Arabs but not printing. The reason may well lie in the Arab insistence of hand copying their holy book, the Quran. Publishing could begin only after the monopoly of letters, often held by a priestly caste, had been broken. This was probably in connection with the development of the value of writing in commerce. Book production was largely confined to religious centres of learning. Only in Greece, Rome, and China, where there were essentially non-theocratic societies, does there seem to have been any publishing in the modern sense—that is a copy of printed work offered for distribution.
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Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable or moveable wooden or metal letters in 1440 which revolutionized communication. Moveable type was the missing ingredient for efficient printing. It changed the entire printing process by making it a lot more flexible, especially compared to block printing. Gutenberg’s achievement was not a single invention but a whole new craft involving moveable metal type, ink, paper, and press. He used a hand press used in his time by the wine industry. Ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of the hand-set letters held within a wooden frame, and the frame was then pressed against the paper. The press enabled sharp impressions on both sides of a sheet of paper and many repetitions. After a set of pages were printed, the type could be reused for printing other pages.In less than fifty years it had been carried through most of Europe, largely by German printers. Prior to Gutenberg’s press, there were a few thousand manuscripts in Europe. Fifty years after his death, there were more than a million. Over the next 500 years a great many improvements had been made in the mechanics of printing. However, till today, the fundamental process of printing remains essentially the same.
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Published matter falls into two main categories, periodicals and non periodicals. Non periodicals are publications that appear on single occasions (except for reissuing the same material). Of the non periodical publications, books constitute the largest class. They are also, the oldest type of publication. A well rounded definition of a book is ‘’a portable container consisting of a series of printed and bound pages that preserves, announces, expounds, and transmits knowledge to a literate readership across time and space’’. Barnes and Noble, 105 Fifth Avenue, New York, the largest bookshop in the world, contains 207,000 metres of shelving; that’s the distance from Delhi to Agra! Book publishing today is an enormous business. The world’s largest publisher in 1999 was Bertelsmann AG, whose German based group made a profit of nearly 27 billion marks which equates to more than 14 billion dollars. That’s more than the entire economy of some countries! Even with the advent of the internet, online publishing, amazon.com and electronic book readers (e-readers) like Kindle; the print and publishing has not become redundant–– yet!
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Initially, printing was thought of merely as a means of avoiding copying errors. Yet, its possibilities for mass producing written matter soon became evident. The church, the state, universities, reformers, and radicals were all quick to use the press. Not surprisingly, every kind of attempt was made to control and regulate such a “dangerous’’ new mode of communication. Freedom of the press is fought for even today; that is the right to publish things without government interference or prior censorship.The mechanization of printing in the 19th century and its further development in the 20th, which went hand in hand with increasing literacy and rising standards of education, finally brought the printed word to its powerful position as a means of influencing minds and, hence, societies. In the past, the publisher was often also the author, the printer, and bookseller. Now days, the publishing industry is very specialised. Most publishers today purchase printing services in the open market, solicit manuscripts from authors, and distribute their wares to buyers through shops, mail order, or direct sales.
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Periodicals are publications that are published at regular intervals (weekly, monthly...) and are members of a series. They further divided into two main classes, newspapers and magazines. Both sprang up after the invention of the printing press, and have shown a phenomenal rate of growth to meet the demand for quick information and regular entertainment. The boundary between them is not sharp, there are magazines devoted to news, and many newspapers have magazine features. However, their differences in periodicity, format, tempo, and function are sufficiently marked: the newspaper (daily or weekly) usually has loose pages, a high degree of immediacy, and miscellaneous contents. Magazine pages are usually bound, they ‘re less urgent in tone and more specialized in content. They can be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Zines are a more recent development. They are cheaply printed magazines published irregularly by amateurs in print or on the web. They often feature images and ideas reflecting unconventional, personal thoughts. Cutlet, the Srishti students’ zine is a great example! There are, of course, many other types of publications besides books, newspapers, and magazines. In many cases the same principles of publishing apply, but the nature of the product and the technicalities of its manufacturing are different. Pamphlets and brochures, sheet music, maps and atlases, calendars, diaries, timetables, guide books, etc.
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Excerpt from an online article:
Electronic ink may rewrite the book publishing industry Once upon a time, not too long ago, people prophesied the end of the printed book (and magazine and newspaper). That didn’t happen, of course. As good as technology is, it could not match, let alone beat, the experience of reading a printed book. But we’re potentially on the cusp of a change. A new technology is now making it into consumer products that just might make e-books a viable alternative to printed ones. It’s called electronic ink, and it can make a computer display look like a page in a printed book as opposed to a glowing screen. Printed books, after all, are hard to beat.They’re cheap, portable, tough, battery free, and easy to share.Various attempts at electronic books haven’t taken off for lots of reasons. It’s not comfortable to read while leaning into a computer monitor, for one. And books for pocket computers suffer because of those devices’small screen size. Besides, LCD screens are hard to look at for long periods of time since they are lit from behind. That last point may seem like a minor thing, but it’s not. When we read a paper book, the ambient light is reflected off the pages. When we read a computer screen, the light comes from behind; it’s not natural and much harder on the eyes. And that’s where the newest technology in the making, e-books-work arsenal comes in; electronic ink. It’s a quantum leap over traditional LCD
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technology, and makes e-books as comfortable to read as paper ones. Will it replace printed books? Not for a long time, if ever. But is it a viable and profitable alternative? You bet! Andrew Kantor/Cyberspeak Go to WWW.USATODAY.COM to read the full article
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By Pushpi Bagchi