The State of Print Today
Today, print has matured to a state where the majority of modern society has come to have certain expectations regarding the printed book:
- The knowledge contained by printed books is believed to be accurate.
- The cited author of a printed book does indeed exist and is actually the person who wrote it.
- Every copy of a printed book is identical (at least in the important aspects) to every other copy, no matter how far apart the locations are in which they are sold.
Copyright laws help to protect these standards. However, a few regions do exist in the world where literary piracy has become a standard commercial practice. In such regions, the preceding expectations are not the norm. (Johns 61)
Currently, there are still approximately 2.3 billion books still sold each year worldwide. However, this number is steadily decreasing due to the ever-growing popularity of the Internet and other forms of digital media.
Read more about this topic: Print Culture
Famous quotes containing the words state, print and/or today:
“The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. They perform their cycles with the same mathematical precision, and they will continue to affect each thing on earth, including man, as long as the earth exists.”
—Linda Goodman (b. 1929)
“Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,—he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,—a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn’t written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)