This is how books have been made since the time of Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. And, despite the changing equipment to execute the various steps, the same tasks need to be accomplished: text and images transferred in some way to the page, signatures bound and trimmed, covers attached.

This is why I consider e-books merely a metaphor. Books are composed of atoms – inky atoms and slurry atoms and textured atoms and smooth atoms. Lots and lots of atoms – not a byte amongst them.

Other posts you may like:

print production circa 1970

a brief history of book printing and binding