Book Publishers Day Date in the current year: January 16, 2024

Books have been around for thousands of years, but for the longest time, they were copied by hand. Since the bookmaking process was long and laborious, books were relatively rare and extremely expensive. Things began to change in the 15th century, when German inventor Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, laying the foundation of modern book publishing. Mass production of books made them more affordable and accessible to the wider public.

Following the invention of the printing press in 1440, book printing spread across Europe relatively quickly, but most early books were printed in Latin. It took more time for printed books written in native languages to become widespread. It also took some time to create movable type in scripts other than Latin. For example, the first Quran in the Arabic script was printed in 1530s, but it took almost 200 more years for the first Arabic printing press to be established in Constantinople. The first book in the Cyrillic script was published by Ivan Fyodorov in 1563–1564.

Another milestone in the history of book publishing was the invention of offset printing that made the process even more efficient and lowered the costs of book production. Finally, the 1990s saw the beginning of the digital era of book publishing, with e-books and audiobooks becoming widely available.

Of course, book publishing is about more than just printing. The process of publishing a book is long and laborious; it consists of many stages such as acquisition of the manuscript, several rounds of editing, design and typesetting, proofreading, corrections, prepress, printing, postpress (binding), distribution, and marketing and publicity. The process may vary depending on the publisher, but the basic stages remains the same.

Today, there are thousands of publishing houses around the globe, ranging from small independent publishers to large multinational conglomerates such as Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan Publishers. In addition, book publishing can be undertaken by academic institutions, other nonprofit organizations, and governments. Self-publishing companies can be considered book publishers too; they allow authors to publish books at their own cost without the involvement of a traditional publisher, but may offer services like editing or promotion to authors who need them.

The origins of Book Publishers Day are unclear, and the holiday doesn’t seem to be very popular in the publishing industry, but this doesn’t mean that book publishers don’t deserve to be celebrated. You gen get involved with Book Publishers Day by giving a shout-out to your favorite publishers on social media, supporting small publishers by purchasing their books at your local independent bookstore, donating some books to your local library, and spreading the word about the holiday on social media with the hashtag #BookPublishersDay.