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A Brief History of the Book – Part II
Article by Sam Vaknin

E-books, cheaper than even paperbacks, are “literature for the million” par excellence. Both libraries reprint old and current e-book publishers specialize in inexpensive books in the public domain (ie, whose copyright has expired). John Bell (competing with Dr. Johnson) put out “the poets of Great Britain” in 1777-83. Each of the 109 volumes cost six shillings (compared to the usual guinea or more). The Railway Library of novels (1,300 volumes) costs 1 shilling each only eight decades later. The price started to dive throughout the next century and a half. E-books and POD return this fall in prices trend.The book, the reduction of barriers to entry aided by new technologies and plentiful credit, the proliferation of publishers, and cutthroat competition among booksellers was such that price regulation (cartel ) had to be introduced. Net publisher prices, trade discounts, list prices and are all anti-competitive practices of 19th century Europe. Still, this unfortunate period also gave rise to trade associations, organizations, publishers, literary agents, author contracts, royalties agreements, mass marketing and Internet copyrights.The standard is often perceived as nothing more than a glorified – although scanned – sales catalog by email. But e-books are different. Lawmakers and the courts have yet to establish whether e-books are books on everything. Existing contracts between authors and publishers may not cover the electronic delivery of texts. E-books also offer serious price competition to more traditional forms of publication and are therefore likely to cause a realignment of the entire industry.Rights may have to be re-assigned, revenues re-distributed, contractual relationships reconsidered. Until then, e-books amounted to little more than re-formatted interpretations of the printed editions. But the authors are increasingly publishing their books primarily or exclusively as e-books, thus undermining both hardcover and paperbacks.Luddite printers and publishers resisted – often violently – every stage in the evolution of trade: stereotypes, iron press, the application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and composition, new methods of reproducing illustrations, cloth bindings, machine-made paper, ready-bound books, brochures, book clubs, book and exception tokens.Without they finally relented and embraced new technologies to considerable commercial advantage. Similarly, publishers were initially hesitant and reluctant to embrace the Internet, POD, and e-publishing. Not surprisingly, they came around.Printed books in 17th and 18th centuries were despised by their contemporaries as inferior to their laboriously hand-made antecedents and to the incunabula. These complaints are reminiscent of current criticism of new media (Internet, e-books): the work of poor quality, poor appearance, and lush piracy.The first decades after the invention of the press were, as the Encyclopedia Britannica says “a restless highly competitive free for all vitality … (with) enormous and variety (often leading to) careless work “. There were egregious acts of piracy – for example, illegal copying of the Aldine Latin “pocket books”, or the all-pervasive bootlegging book in England in the 17th century, a direct result of over-regulation and coercive copyright monopolies.Shakespeare ‘s work was replicated many times offenders emerging intellectual property rights. Later, the American colonies became the world center of industrialized and systematic book piracy. Confronted with abundant and cheap pirated foreign books, local authors resorted to freelancing in magazines and lectures in a vain effort to make ends meet.Pirates and unlicensed – and therefore, subversive – publishers were prosecuted under a variety of laws of monopoly and libel and, later, under national security and obscenity laws. Both royal and “democratic” governments acted ruthlessly to preserve their control over publishing.John Milton wrote his passionate plea against censorship, Areopagitica, in response to licensing ordinance passed by the British Parliament in 1643. The revolutionary Copyright Act of 1709 decreed that in England authors and publishers have the right to reap the benefits of their purely commercial ventures, if only for a certain period of time.The never relinquish battle between industrial-commercial publishers with their technology every and more powerful legal arsenal and arts and crafts free-spirited crowd now rages as fiercely as ever in numerous discussion lists, fora, tomes, and conferences.William Morris started the “private press” movement in England in the 19th century to combat what he saw as the callous commercialization of book publishing. When printing was invented, was put into commercial use by private companies (traders) of the day. Established “publishers” (monasteries), with some exceptions (eg, in Augsburg, Germany and at Subiaco, Italy) shunned it as a major threat to culture and civilization. His attacks on printing read like the litanies against self-publishing or corporate-controlled publishing today.But, expanded as readers – women and the poor became increasingly literate – the number of publishers multiplied. In the early 19th century, innovative lithographic and offset processes allowed publishers in the West to add illustrations (the first color, black and white and then), tables, detailed maps and anatomical, and other graphics for your books.Publishers fought and librarians more formats (book sizes) and fonts (Gothic versus Roman), but consumer preferences prevailed. The book is based multimedia. E-books will probably undergo a similar transition from static interpretations of a digital print edition – the lively, colorful, interactive library and commercial loans enabled objects.The commercial and, later, the free library were two additional reactions to the growing demand. In the 18th century, publishers and booksellers expressed the – the fear that libraries will cannibalize their trade – basis. However, libraries have actually increased sales of books and became a large market in its own right. They are likely to do the same for e-books.Publishing always been a social pursuit, heavily dependent on social evolution, such as the spread of literacy and the liberation of minorities (especially women). As every new format matures, it is subject to regulation from within and without. E-books and other digital content are no exception. Hence the recurrent and current attempts at restrictive regulation and the legal skirmishes that follow them.At its inception, each new variant of content packaging was considered “dangerous.” The Church, formerly the largest publisher of Bibles and other religious and “earthly” texts and the upholder and protector Reading in the Dark Ages, castigated and censored the printing of “heretical” books, especially the vernacular Bibles of the same Reformation.It restored the Inquisition for the specific purpose of controlling book publishing. In 1559, he published the Index of prohibited books (“Index of Prohibited Books”). Some, mostly Dutch, ended the game publishers. European rulers issued proclamations against “naughty printed books” of heresy and sedition.The printing of books was subject to licensing by the Privy Council of England. The very concept of copyright arose out of the forced recording of securities in the Company’s register of English paper, a real instrument of influence and intrigue. Registration required, such granted to the publisher the right to exclusively copy the registered book – or, more often, a class of books – for a number of years, but politically constrained printable content, often force.Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are still distant dreams in most of the land. Even in the U.S., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the V-chip and other privacy invading, dissemination inhibiting, and censorship imposing measures perpetuate a veteran, though not so venerable tradition.The more you change, the more it remains the same. If the history of the book teaches us anything is that there are no limits to creativity with which publishers, authors and booksellers, the practices of re-inventing old. Technological and marketing innovations are invariably perceived as threats – only to be dismissed later as articles of faith. Publishing faces the same problems and challenges he faced 500 years ago, and responds to them in much the same way.