In 1453, Gutenberg printed the first 42-line Bible (from the Vulgate), using movable type he invented, on paper produced by the Galliziani brothers' paper mills. It took him three years to produce 180 copies, whereas a copyist monk of the time produced one. âeuros¨From a confidential production of 30,000 manuscripts per year in Europe, the book underwent a vertiginous expansion in the centuries following the 15th century: 200 million in the 16th, 550 in the 17th, 1 billion in the 18th! Reserved for an aristocratic elite, religious institutions and universities, books played a very important role in the formation and edification of religious morality, necessary for the education of generations. And acquiring a book was expensive. The acquisition of a library (Mazarin's at the HÃ'tel du Luxembourg is the most famous) was the prerogative of powerful and renowned men.
Novels and the democratization of reading
At the beginning of the 19th century, a new literary genre, the novel, popularized the book as a medium of literature accessible to the new possessing class, the bourgeoisie. The publisher Charpentier invented the pocket format, an in-18, which enabled the novel to be produced in a single volume instead of three, at the time, its price dropping from 7.5 francs to 3.5 francs. From then on, books became popular and took on a social function in European society.
Novelists such as Balzac, Eugène Sue and Zola were as much observers of their times as they were actors in political life, revealing the social reality of their contemporaries.
The spread of primary schooling and literacy among the population made books an everyday item. The major French publishing houses - Hachette, Goncourt, Flammarion, Grasset, etc. - established themselves in a highly competitive environment, and constantly sought to optimize production costs. Until the end of the 20th century, paper was the medium for the text and the main cost of book production.
The advent of digital books, a publishing revolution
The digitization of text and the distribution of books via the Internet have revolutionized the cycle inaugurated by Gutenberg.
Publishers' main interest in digitalization is to reduce publishing costs. They have also seen in this technology the hope of seeing the paper medium disappear in favor of tablets or e-readers. And they will no longer have to deal with costly restocking of books.
Paper, a timeless substrate
Well, actually, no. Paper books have held up well, since 90% of publishers' revenues today come from paper publishing, representing sales of 3 billion euros in France (source: SNE), production of 110,000 titles, including 40,000 new titles, 554 million books produced, including 273 in reprints.
It is on these 273 million reprinted books that the digitization of books has enabled significant cost reductions, with the introduction of digital presses since 2000.
New printers, such as CPI in France, have been able to take a significant place in the book market. And the print-on-demand concept enables some authors to publish their literary output at low cost.
This resistance is certainly linked to the reading comfort provided by paper, but also to the very symbolism of buying a book and keeping it in the home library. Don't we judge the quality of our host by the sight of his library?
Digital activity therefore represents new sales for publishers, focusing primarily on copyright-free literary works, but above all on academic production, which accounts for 68% of digital publishing revenues. This is because the Internet originated with the university network, which wanted to network their computers so as to share their research across worldwide teams of researchers. And the network's primary objective was to share its work, not to capture information about the correspondent and turn it into marketable data. Instinctively, we sense the greatness and dangers of social networking, and the need to preserve paper as a safeguard for information production.
Remarkably resilient support
In short, although the proportion of paper used for printing has been significantly reduced over the last twenty years, from 55% in 2005 to 35% in 2018, of the 10 million tonnes of paper and cardboard manufactured in France, this medium is remarkably resilient.
Massive use, corresponding to the consumer society of the 20th century, has been replaced by reasoned and qualified use, both for access to verified information and for comfortable access to intellectual works.
