In colonial America, English locksmith Stephen Daye set up a print shop in the late 1630s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1640, Daye and his son Matthew printed the first colonial book, The Whole Booke of Psalms (known today as The Bay Psalm Book), marking the beginning of book publishing in the colonies. This collection of biblical psalms quickly sold out its first printing of 1,750 copies, even though fewer than 3,500 families lived in the colonies at the time. By the mid-1760s, all thirteen colonies had printing shops.

In 1744, Benjamin Franklin, who had worked in printing shops, imported Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740) from Britain, the first novel reprinted and sold in colonial America. Both Pamela and Richardson’s second novel, Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady (1747), connected with the newly emerging and literate middle classes, especially with women, who were just starting to gain a social identity as individuals apart from their fathers, husbands, and employers. Richardson’s novels portrayed women in subordinate roles; however, they also depicted women triumphing over tragedy, so he is credited as one of the first popular writers to take the domestic life of women seriously.

By the early 1800s, the demand for books was growing. To meet this demand, the cost of producing books needed to be reduced. By the 1830s, machine-made paper replaced more expensive handmade varieties, cloth covers supplanted more expensive leather ones, and paperback books with cheaper paper covers (introduced from Europe) helped to make books more accessible to the masses. Further reducing the cost of books, Erastus and Irwin Beadle introduced paperback dime novels (so called because they sold for five or ten cents) in 1860. Ann Stephens authored the first dime novel, Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter, a reprint of a serialized story Stephens wrote in 1839 for the Ladies’ Companion magazine.⁵ By 1870, dime novels had sold seven million copies. By 1885, one-third of all books published in the United States were popular paperbacks and dime novels, sometimes identified as pulp fiction, a reference to the cheap, machine-made pulp paper they were printed on.

In addition, the printing process became quicker and more mechanized. In the 1880s, the introduction of linotype machines enabled printers to save time by setting type mechanically using a typewriter-style keyboard, while the introduction of steam-powered and high-speed rotary presses permitted the production of more books at lower costs. In the early 1900s, the development of offset lithography allowed books to be printed from photographic plates rather than from metal casts, greatly reducing the cost of color and illustrations and accelerating book production. With these developments, books disseminated further, preserving culture and knowledge and supporting a vibrant publishing industry.

TABLE 10.1

ANNUAL NUMBERS OF NEW BOOK TITLES PUBLISHED, SELECTED YEARS

Sources: Figures through 1945 from John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, 4 vols. (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1972–81); figures after 1945 from various editions of The Bowker Annual Library and Book Trade Almanac (Information Today, Inc.) and Bowker press releases.

*Changes in the Almanac’s methodology in 1997 and for years 2004–07 resulted in additional publications being assigned ISBNs and included in their count.

**Projected by The Library and Book Trade Almanac.