Book Printing Quotes

The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.

For 500 years after Gutenberg, the dominant form of information was the printed page: knowledge was primarily delivered in a fixed format, one that encouraged readers to believe in stable and settled truths.

Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn't write it in the first place.

He that desires to print a book, should much more desire, to be a book.

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned savings - say, some two-three lakhs - and getting your book printed. It's not published; it's printed!

When I found the book was condemned as soon as the book was printed, or rather as soon as it was set up ready to print, I held it in plates for a year nearly, waiting to see what would come out of all this discussion.

As the words of my book, 'The Bloodless Revolution,' accumulated, I envisaged a parallel growth: the stack of pages they would have to be printed on, thousands of times over; every page representing a slice of forest, a belch of fumes and a squirt of toxic ink.

In my ideal world, my next novel would have a first printing of, say, 2,500 hardcovers for reviewers, libraries, collectors, and autograph hounds. The publisher could print more copies if they get low. And simultaneously, or six weeks later, the book would be available in paperback.

I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked.

My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they're able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home.

Book reviewing dates only to the eighteenth century, when, for the first time, there were so many books being printed that magazines - they were new, too - started printing essays about them.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

The moment when the finished book or, better yet, a tightly packed carton of finished books arrives on my doorstep is the moment of truth, of culmination; its bliss lasts as much as five minutes, until the first typographical error or production flaw is noticed.

I don't mean to beat a made-in-America drum, but I would be lying if I said it doesn't feel somehow right to be printing books in the U.S.

I want to print books by people in the film industry.

I had to learn to call book jackets 'jackets' rather than 'covers.'

I bring a copy of 'Dracula' with me wherever I go, the book. It's my favorite book in the world, it's absolutely incredible. My great-great grandfather was the guy who printed the first edition, so he's the first person to ever put 'Dracula' on the written page.

The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in 'type' for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.

Perceval Press a publishing house I founded in 2002 and it's still going strong. Strong for us means not so many books per year, but each one we very carefully design and print.