A Tapestry of Change: Printing Technology and Publishing in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been the scene of explosive technical changes in bookmaking: typesetting by Linotype; power cylinder presses, offset lithography; machine-made paper; mechanical binding techniques, the application of both photography to the printing processes of letterpress and lithography; computer applications for both control and actual production--all have completely changed the face of book-making since 1800.

Coincident with the introduction of process changes came changes in publishing which reordered author-publisher-printer-bookseller relations. Printers and booksellers became specialists in their fields, publishers found a new interface between author and reader as they concentrated on securing manuscripts and marketing.

As a part of the publishing process, printing changes enabled publishers to lower costs, to develop new markets for wider readership well beyond the scope of the Book Trade alone, with an annual torrent of about 45,000 titles in America alone, and in many formats tailored to specific markets.

The nineteenth century was a time in the Graphic Arts when machines and steam power brought changes to the publishing process--more books sold, more titles published, broader readership, new entertainment.

Publishing in the twentieth century has become a highly sophisticated manufacturing business and less and less reflective of the literary canon, using modern merchandising methods to move books off shelves into readers' hands. Merchandisers are now marketing books at any place where retail traffic can be expected; and publishers and printers use the most modern merchandising tools and methods to keep books in stock for sale, such as including bar codes on every book for inventory control, computerized accounting, and aggressive pricing, as well as new communication technology on TV and on the computer web. It must be remembered, too, that it has become clearer that the major competitors for book sales are not other books, but other media; increasingly books are priced based on their own costs, not on what similar books are selling for. Manufacturing methods are central to the merchandising equation as well, by ensuring availability of stock for sale at the right price, using modern and efficient machines and processes.