The article closes with a discussion of the following very practical topics: the preparation or “make ready” for printing; recent development in printing with cross references to the article Process; and a paragraph on the management of a printing house.
Proof-Reading
From this closing paragraph and the article on Printing, the student is referred to the article Proof-Reading (Vol. 22, p. 438) which is by John A. Black, head press reader of the 10th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and John Randall, sub-editor of the Athenaeum and of Notes and Queries and former secretary of the London Association of Correctors of the Press, so that this article, like all the other articles on the subject of book-making, is written by eminent practical authorities on the subject.
Bookbinding
The same is true of the article Bookbinding (Vol. 4, p. 216), which naturally follows in a systematic course of study. This is by Cyril J. H. Davenport, assistant keeper of books in the British Museum and author of History of the Book, etc. This article is illustrated with 14 figures, including 8 in halftone, showing typical fine bindings. The other illustrations show machines and processes used in binding. Besides a historical sketch of book-binding the article treats of the following topics:
Modern methods and modern binding designers; machine binding, machine sewing, rounding and backing, casing, wiring, and blocking. A case-making machine, a casing-in machine and a blocking machine are shown in the illustrations.
A bookbinder or a student of the subject will find a great deal of very valuable information elsewhere in the book, particularly in the article Leather (Vol. 16, p. 330) by Dr. J. Gordon Parker, principal of the Leathersellers Technical College, London, and author of Leather for Libraries, etc. The article occupies the equivalent of 55 pages of this Guide; and the possessor of the Britannica will be interested to know that the leather bindings used for its volumes were all made according to specifications drawn up by Dr. Parker, the greatest authority in the world on tanning, curing and dyeing leather for book-bindings.
Publishing and Book-Selling
The last stages in getting the author’s raw material “from him to the ultimate consumer” are those in which the publisher and bookseller play their part; and for a description of their functions the student should refer to the articles on publishing and book-selling in the Britannica. The article Publishing (Vol. 22, p. 628) explains that publishing and book-selling were for a long time carried on together since “booksellers were the first publishers of printed books, as they had previously been the agents for the production and exchange of authentic manuscript copies.” The separation of publishing from book-selling is due to “the tendency of every composite business to break up, as it expands, into specialized departments.” As publishers became a separate class the work of their literary assistants also broke up into specialized departments—proof-reading and the reading of manuscripts submitted by authors—or the work of printers’ readers and publishers’ readers.
The importance of the work of the publisher’s reader is dwelt upon in this article which sketches besides the growth of the Society of Authors in England and of the formation there of the Publishers’ Association and the Booksellers’ Association. The article also outlines the methods of publishing in the United States and gives particular prominence to the effect on the British market of the introduction of American books and of American book-selling methods.