I’ve been thinking a lot about books as physical objects
lately.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is how they have been
used in ways they were not intended.
In the English class I’m taking right now we are learning about the Exeter Book, which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon literature made from vellum that is around a thousand years old. Researchers have performed analysis on the book itself and found traces of beer on it and particles in grooves on the book that suggest it was used as a board for cutting cheese at one point.
In the English class I’m taking right now we are learning about the Exeter Book, which is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon literature made from vellum that is around a thousand years old. Researchers have performed analysis on the book itself and found traces of beer on it and particles in grooves on the book that suggest it was used as a board for cutting cheese at one point.
The office I’m editing this post in had a book propping up
the leg of a wiggly table for several years before it was removed.
Even when books are used the way they were intended, there’s
a lot to consider and appreciate about their form.
It’s funny. I’ve been a big reader my whole life, and, on
the whole prefer print books to ebooks, but up until recently I hadn’t put much
thought into the act of making the book itself.
Sure, I knew that most of the time books are released in
hardcover first, followed by a paperback run, and I knew artist must put a lot
of thought and effort into the cover design or image. It never occurred to me
that there would be other designers working behind the scenes to make a book
what it is when you see it in the bookstore.
I attended a publishing program in New York this summer and
it was an amazingly in-depth overview of the publishing industry and what it
entails. I already knew what people like editors, publicists, and literary
agents were and did (though I learned an incredible amount of new things about
those professions too) but one day we had a presentation on book production and
it was so surprising to me because I’d never heard of it before.
Book production is essentially the creation of the book that
you see in bookstores. The dimensions of a book, paper used for printing,
whether or not the outsides of the pages are smooth or ridged or colored – all
of this is the job of the book producer. And yes, the cover designer lays out
the look of the book. But if the cover is embossed or has a cut out or the
paper has a textured or holographic element to it? That’s the realm of the book
production department.
Another thing we learned in that program is that around five
to ten years ago, publishers were very worried that the physical book would
soon become obsolete, replaced by the ebook. If you look at the charts, there
was a boom in ebook sales and a decline in print sales for a while, but
eventually the levels plateaued and, actually, ebook sales are declining
somewhat.
I’m sure there are multiple factors for this, but I think a
big part of it is that people do really appreciate books as physical objects,
not just words on a page, and have for thousands of years. Hopefully, people
appreciate the physicality more for its beauty of design like the book of Kells
or some tome one might see photographed for the #bookstagram tag and not its
utility as a cheese cutting board like the Exeter book or a block for propping
up a wobbly table leg.
Either way, books have an inherent value as objects that
cannot be replicated in digital form, though perhaps one gains the convenience
of being able to read on their phone.
The next time you take out a book, I encourage you to really
look at it. Look at the things that you might normally overlook like the type
of paper it’s printed on, the textures on its cover, whether the pages lie flat
or have ridges, how the spine is bound – and know that a team of people spent
hours weighing options and looking at price points to bring you the final
product that rests in your hands. How does the book itself help tell the story
in its pages?
