This is how books were made when the contents were seen as precious and worthy of handing down to succeeding generations. The process is obviously expensive, and is now mostly the domain of restorers and hobbyists rather than publishers.
Until about 1960, sewn binding was the norm for textbooks and those novels falling outside the category of pulp fiction, which was and is issued with ‘perfect binding’, using glue to hold the spine of the book together. Pulp books, typically with paper covers, were regarded as disposable, and if they fell to pieces after a while (which they do, when the glue dries out) nobody would very much care.
A sewn book, especially in hard covers, remains open and can be read hands-free. It has a much longer life than a perfect-bound book; I have handled an original copy of the first volume of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, published in 1590 and still perfectly intact.
In 1935 the founders of Penguin Books decided to adopt perfect binding in order to make books of a better quality affordable. Perfect binding has gradually become more and more widespread, to the detriment of reading, because it is difficult to keep a perfect-bound book open. Various reading-stands and other devices are available, but these are at best a bodge. Perfect binding for a textbook is something of a disaster.
Until about 1960, sewn binding was the norm for textbooks and those novels falling outside the category of pulp fiction, which was and is issued with ‘perfect binding’, using glue to hold the spine of the book together. Pulp books, typically with paper covers, were regarded as disposable, and if they fell to pieces after a while (which they do, when the glue dries out) nobody would very much care.
A sewn book, especially in hard covers, remains open and can be read hands-free. It has a much longer life than a perfect-bound book; I have handled an original copy of the first volume of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, published in 1590 and still perfectly intact.
In 1935 the founders of Penguin Books decided to adopt perfect binding in order to make books of a better quality affordable. Perfect binding has gradually become more and more widespread, to the detriment of reading, because it is difficult to keep a perfect-bound book open. Various reading-stands and other devices are available, but these are at best a bodge. Perfect binding for a textbook is something of a disaster.
Traditional publishers are in business to make a profit. Perfect binding becomes the norm; typefaces get smaller; the paper is of lower and lower quality; and the books become more expensive. The majority of titles published in paper are failures, financially speaking, so it behoves the publisher to cut corners wherever he can: he depends on a few best-sellers to keep the money rolling in.
One of the reasons I do not issue my novels in paper is that the quality of print-on-demand books is appallingly low. They are produced as cheaply as possible and deliver a horrible reading experience. An ebook is much nicer (and even cheaper), will not fall to pieces, and can be read hands-free. What’s more, the publisher, if he knows his business, can format the content to make it as least as attractive as that of a printed book, the bonus for the reader being that he can alter the typeface, margins and leading to his liking.
If moreover he owns an ereader with a leather cover, all his reading on that device will be of leather-bound books …
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