In Ancient Egypt, papyrus (a form of paper made from the stems of the papyrus plant) was already used for writing as from 2400 BC. The word paper is derived from the word papyrus. The Ancient Egyptians are thought to have been the first people to write books. They used a picture alphabet called hieroglyphics and their books were written on papyrus.

Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. This custom gained widespread popularity in the Hellenistic and Roman world, although we have evidence that tree bark (Latin liber, from there also library) was used from earlier times in Italy. The Ancient Romans also used Greek tablets of wax. Wax tablets had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted and a new text carved into the wax.

Papyrus scrolls were still dominant when codex appeared in the first century A.D - as do the findings in Pompeii give witness. First written mentioning of codex as the form of the book is from Martial. 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.[citation needed] In the pagan Hellenistic world, the codex never gained much popularity and only within the Christian community was it popularized and gained widespread use. The idea of a codex is probably influenced by the way several wax tablets were joined together, as does the etymology of the word codex (block of wood) suggest. At first used mainly for accounting, the codex together with the development of parchment slowly phased out papyrus scrolls during third century A.D. This happened already in the Christian environment and the reasons of adopting the codex form of the book are several - the codex format is more economical as both sides of the writing material can be used, it is easy to conceal, portable and searchable. It is also possible that the Christian authors distinguished their writings on purpose from the pagan texts which were written normally in the form of scrolls.

Middle Ages

The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D saw the decline of Roman culture. Book culture was however kept alive in Latin in monasteries, because first Cassiodorus in the monastery of Vivarium and later St. Benedict of Nursia, in the sixth century stressed the importance of copying texts. This greatly influenced the importance of books through the Middle Ages, and why the clergy were the predominant readers of books.

Before the invention and adoption of the printing press, almost all books were copied by hand, which made books comparatively expensive and rare. There were four types of scribes:

Copyists (they dealt with basic production and correspondence)

Calligraphers (who dealt in fine book production)

Correctors (they collated, and compared a finished book with the manuscript from which it had been produced)

Rubricators (they painted in the red letters) and Illuminators (they painted illustrations)

Irish monks introduced spacing between words in the seventh century. This facilitated reading, and these monks tended to be less familiar with Latin. Including spacing between letters did not become common practice until later, in the eleventh century.

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. Vellum and paper also were produced congruent to one another, vellum being the more expensive and durable option. Printers or publishers would often issue the same publication on both materials, to cater to more than one market. Paper was first made in China, as early as 200 B.C. Early Western paper was made with rags. The industrial revolution changed paper-making practices, allowing for paper to be made out of wood pulp.

In the early 14th century, block printing arrived in Western Europe (the technique had been developed in the East centuries earlier). In block printing, a relief image of an entire page was carved out of blocks of wood. It could then be inked and used to reproduce many copies of that page. Books, as well as playing cards and religious pictures, began to be produced by block printing. Creating an entire book, however, was a painstaking process, requiring a hand-carved block for each page. Also, the wood blocks were not 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 comparatively affordable (although still quite expensive for most people) and more 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 development of the printing press.

Before Gutenberg, Stationers guilds existed. These guilds were secular, and produced both religious and non-religious material. Manuscripts, both divine and secular, were produced in Latin, the language of the Roman-Catholic church.

Modern World

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.

Steam-powered printing presses became popular in the early 1800s. These machines could print 1,100 sheets per hour, but workers could only set 2,000 letters per hour.

Monotype and linotype presses were introduced in the late 19th century. They could set more than 6,000 letters per hour and an entire line of type at once.

The centuries after the 15th century were thus 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 had risen to over 200,000 titles per year.