Lithography is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps. Lithography can be used to print text or images onto paper or other suitable material. A lithograph is something printed by lithography, but this term is only used for fine art prints and some other, mostly older, types of printed matter, not for those made by modern commercial lithography.
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house which authors pay to have their books published. Where mainstream publishers aim to sell enough copies of a book to cover their own costs, and typically reject a majority of the books submitted to them, a vanity press will usually publish any book for which an author is willing to pay their fees. Professionals working in the publishing industry make a clear distinction between vanity publishing and self-publishing, which has a long and distinguished history.
A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably.
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.
Private press publishing, with respect to books, is an endeavor performed by craft-based expert or aspiring artisans, either amateur or professional, who, among other things, print and build books, typically by hand, with emphasis on design, graphics, layout, fine printing, binding, covers, paper, stitching, and the like.
Ann Smith Franklin was an American colonial newspaper printer and publisher. She inherited the business from her husband, James Franklin, brother of Benjamin Franklin. She published the Mintunt, printed an almanac series. She was the country’s first female newspaper editor, the first woman to write an almanac, and the first woman inducted into the University of Rhode Island's Journalism Hall of Fame.
In printing, a stereotype, stereoplate or simply a stereo, is a solid plate of type metal, cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mould taken from the surface of a forme of type. The mould was known as a flong.
R.R. Donnelley is an American Fortune 500 integrated communications company that provides marketing and business communications, commercial printing, and related services. Its corporate headquarters are located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. As of 2007, R.R. Donnelley was the world's largest commercial printer.
Frederic Warde was a book designer, editor, and typography designer. One of the great book designers of the twentieth century, Will Ransom described him as "a curious blend of romantic idealism and meticulous practicality." In describing his own work, Warde stated, "The innermost soul of any literary creation can never be seen in all its clarity and truth until one views it through the medium of the printed page, in which there must be absolutely nothing to divide the attention, interrupt the thought, or to offend one's sense of form."
The printer's key, also known as the number line, is a line of text printed on the copyright page of books, used to indicate the print run. Publishers began this convention about the middle of the 20th century; its use became common after 1970.
The history of printing starts as early as 3500 BCE, when the proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations used cylinder seals to certify documents written in clay. Other early forms include block seals, hammered coinage, pottery imprints, and cloth printing. Initially a method of printing patterns on cloth such as silk, woodblock printing for texts on paper originated in China by the 7th century during the Tang dynasty, leading to the spread of book production and woodblock printing in other parts of Asia such as Korea and Japan. The Chinese Buddhist Diamond Sutra, printed by woodblock on 11 May 868, is the earliest known printed book with a precise publishing date. Movable type was invented by Chinese artisan Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty, but it received limited use compared to woodblock printing. Nevertheless, the technology spread outside China, as the oldest printed book using metal movable type was the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era.
Paul Hambleton Landacre was an active participant in the cultural flowering of interwar Los Angeles, described by Jake Zeitlin as a "small Renaissance, Southern California style". His artistic innovations and technical virtuosity gained wood engraving a foothold as a high art form in twentieth-century America. Landacre's linocuts and wood engravings of landscapes, still lifes, nudes, and abstractions are acclaimed for the beauty of their designs and a mastery of materials. He used the finest inks and imported handmade Japanese papers and, with a few exceptions, printed his wood engravings in his studio on a nineteenth-century Washington Hand Press, which is now in the collection of the International Printing Museum in Carson, California.
Edmund Evans was an English wood-engraver and colour printer during the Victorian era. Evans specialized in full-colour printing, which, in part because of his work, became popular in the mid-19th century. He employed and collaborated with illustrators such as Walter Crane, Randolph Caldecott, Kate Greenaway and Richard Doyle to produce what are now considered to be classic children's books. Although little is known about his life, he wrote a short autobiography before his death in 1905 in which he described his life as a printer in Victorian London.
World Color Press Inc. ("Worldcolor") was a company which provided high-value and comprehensive print, digital, and related services to businesses worldwide. World Color and its subsidiaries printed various commercial products, including comic books, magazines, brochures, direct mail and newspaper inserts, and directories, while also providing clients a broad range of pre-press services, such as desktop production and assembly.
William Edwin Rudge is the name of a grandfather, father and son, all of whom worked in the printing business.
Alan Perress Loney is a writer, poet, editor, publisher and letterpress printer. His work has been published by University and private presses in New Zealand, Australia and North America. His own presses have printed and published many of New Zealand's most noted poets. He has also produced books himself, and in collaboration with artists and printmakers in New Zealand and overseas. Originally living and working in New Zealand, he now resides in Melbourne, Australia.
John Stroble Fass was an American graphic designer and a printer of fine press books. Fass designed books for the leading American publishers of limited edition books. Collectors of private press books also remember John Fass for the handcrafted books he printed on a tabletop printing press in his one-room apartment at the Bronx YMCA. Fass' books and his photography celebrate his life in New York City, where he lived most of his career. His work also documents his passion for the rural landscapes of his native Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
The Sacramento Book Collectors Club is a book club and publisher based in Sacramento, California. It was founded in 1939 and has been running as a non-profit organisation since 1954. The club houses around 10,00 books, and has published 18 new titles since 1942.
George Macy (1900–1956) was an American publisher.
The Snoqualmie Valley Record is a weekly newspaper in King County, Washington, United States. The paper was founded as the North Bend Post in 1913 and has published continuously since 1923 as the Snoqualmie Valley Record. The paper covers news in the Snoqualmie Valley, which includes North Bend, Snoqualmie, Preston, Fall City, Carnation, and Duvall.
