Textbooks In Print

In Words Onscreen, Naomi Baron offers a fascinating and timely look at how technology affects the way we read.

So it came to pass that a couple of poets a a congenially munching their bagels in the spacious basement refectory of a bagelry called Finaglea aa Bagel on JFK in Harvard Square, all the while conjecturing upon the potential mental, spiritual and perhaps even physical salubriousness of occasional social interface with other human beings likewise blest or cused to pursue the word, to ply their craft or sullen art, in isolation a a gave birth to the idea of Bagelbards. At any rate, here it is: The First Annual Bagelbards Anthology, in celebration of the first full year of informal weekly Saturday morning gatherings of Bagelbards in the aforementioned spacius basement of Finaglea aa Bagel. Read it, and eat.

The basic business model of the book publishing industry remained largely unchanged between the Great Depression and the turn of the Millennium. Print a lot of books, try to get them reviewed so that stores would stock them on consignment, advertise, then hope that they don't come back as returns. Small imprints and self-publishers were reduced to begging distributors to accept their titles at discounts of 60% or more, and were expected to accept returns in any condition and quantity. Print-on-demand book publishing, combined with short-discount distribution and Internet marketing, is turning the publishing business on its head. For the first time, authors are finding that they can launch their own publishing businesses and earn more from their writing than they would with a major trade publisher. Small imprints can invest their scarce resources in acquiring, designing and promoting new titles, rather than gambling on tons of books that cost money to keep in inventory. This book details the new method with which authors and publishers alike can use POD to cut costs and increase profits, while reaching new readers through the magic of Internet marketing.

This seven-volume set offers a core collection of hand-selected titles in 58 curriculum-specific subject areas. Volumes are organized into broad subject areas such as Humanities, Languages and Literature, History, Social Sciences and Professional Studies, Science and Technology, and Interdisciplinary and Area Studies. The seventh volume provides helpful cross-referencing indexes which explain the relationship between RCL subject taxonomy and LC ranges. New to this edition are the inclusion of interdisciplinary subject areas and the selection of electronic resources and web sites essential for undergraduate library collections. Non-book selections will be easily identified by a graphic indicator included in the item record. All selections will be assigned an audience level marker indicating whether the title is most appropriate for lower-division undergraduate, upper-division undergraduate, faculty, or general readership. Records will also include a notation if they previously appeared in BCL3 (Books for College Libraries, 1988) or have been reviewed by Choice.

Albert Angelo is by vocation an architect and only by economic necessity working as a substitute teacher. He had thought he was, if not dedicated, at least competent. But now, on temporary assignments in schools located in the tough neighborhoods of London, Albert feels ineffectual. He is failing as a teacher and failing to fulfill himself as an architect. And then, too, he is pained by the memory of a failed love affair.

The Book in Society: An Introduction to Print Culture examines the origins and development of one of the most important inventions in human history. Books can inform, entertain, inspire, irritate, liberate, or challenge readers, and their forms can be tangible and traditional, like a printed, casebound volume, or virtual and transitory, like a screen-page of a cell-phone novel. Written in clear, non-specialist prose, The Book in Society first provides an overview of the rise of the book and of the modern publishing and bookselling industries. It explores the evolution of written texts from early forms to contemporary formats, the interrelationship between literacy and technology, and the prospects for the book in the twenty-first century. The second half of the book is based on historian Robert Darnton’s concept of a book publishing “communication circuit.” It examines how books migrate from the minds of authors to the minds of readers, exploring such topics as the rise of the modern notion of the author, the role of states and others in promoting or restricting the circulation of books, various modes of reproducing and circulating texts, and how readers’ responses help shape the form and content of the books available to them. Feature boxes highlighting key texts, individuals, and developments in the history of the book, carefully selected illustrations, and a glossary all help bring the history of the book to life.

Questions of survival and loss bedevil the study of early printed books. Many early publications are not particularly rare, but many have disappeared altogether. Here leading specialists in the field explore different strategies for recovering this lost world of print.

A comprehensive resource to understanding the hand-press printing of early books Studying Early Printed Books, 1450 - 1800 offers a guide to the fascinating process of how books were printed in the first centuries of the press and shows how the mechanics of making books shapes how we read and understand them. The author offers an insightful overview of how books were made in the hand-press period and then includes an in-depth review of the specific aspects of the printing process. She addresses questions such as: How was paper made? What were different book formats? How did the press work? In addition, the text is filled with illustrative examples that demonstrate how understanding the early processes can be helpful to today’s researchers. Studying Early Printed Books shows the connections between the material form of a book (what it looks like and how it was made), how a book conveys its meaning and how it is used by readers. The author helps readers navigate books by explaining how to tell which parts of a book are the result of early printing practices and which are a result of later changes. The text also offers guidance on: how to approach a book; how to read a catalog record; the difference between using digital facsimiles and books in-hand. This important guide: Reveals how books were made with the advent of the printing press and how they are understood today Offers information on how to use digital reproductions of early printed books as well as how to work in a rare books library Contains a useful glossary and a detailed list of recommended readings Includes a companion website for further research Written for students of book history, materiality of text and history of information, Studying Early Printed Books explores the many aspects of the early printing process of books and explains how their form is understood today.

Despite the fact that, if only by number, small and peripheral cities played an important role in fifteenth and sixteenth-century European print culture, book history has mainly been dominated by monographs on individual big book centres. Through a number of specific case studies, which deploy a variety of methods and a wide range of sources, this volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to emphasize the necessity of new research for the study of print culture in such cities.