“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” —Abraham Lincoln
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Thursday, April 23, 2026 is World Book Day. According to Wikipedia,
World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, is an annual event organized by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. The first World Book Day was celebrated on 23 April in 1995, and continues to be recognized on that day.
Clearly, all authors should be celebrating World Book Day, but I have to admit I never heard of this special day until my husband and I were invited to give a presentation on the subject. As a result of that invitation, I did a little research and found it to be such a fascinating story, I figured TKZ folks would be interested.
Much of the information below outlining the major milestones in the history of books came from tckpublishing.com.
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Mesopotamia, 3500 BC – Clay Tablets
The Mesopotamians used wet clay and wrote on it with a reed stylus. The tablets were then dried or baked to preserve the writing. Much of the content recorded inventories, sales information, contracts and legal agreements.
Egypt, 3000 BC – Papyrus
The Egyptians used marrow from the papyrus reed to produce sheets which were glued together to create scrolls. Some of the scrolls were very long—one measured more than 40 meters!
Greece, 500 BC – Goat skins
A shortage of papyrus gave the Greeks incentive to go in another direction, and they used sheep and goat skins to make parchment. It was a good solution, but not as good as leather.
China, 100 BC – Paper!
The Chinese are credited with inventing paper made from rolls of bamboo that were bound together.
Rome, 100 BC – Codex
Romans made a giant leap forward with the invention of the codex, a way to bind pages together to form what we would recognize as a book.
It took 3500 years to get to books in the format we’re used to seeing, but printing books in mass was still to come.
Movable type – 1000 – 1400
The Koreans invented the first metal movable type in 1200 AD and produced the first book with that type in 1377AD.
Gutenberg’s printing press – 1439
Gutenberg’s brilliant invention provided for the mass production of books. The first mass-produced book was the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1455.
Pocketbooks – 1500
Aldus Manutius is credited with inventing this precursor to the modern paperback.
Printing comes to America – 1640
The Puritans brought over a printing press and printed The Bay Psalm, the first book printed in the new world. It contains the Book of Psalms from the Bible. A few copies of the original printing are still in existence.
Project Gutenberg – 1970s
Michael S. Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971 as a way to digitize and preserve important books. As of March 2026, this volunteer effort has made over 75,000 free works available to the public.
Amazon Kindle – 2007
Amazon’s Kindle was introduced in 2007 to light a fire in the reading public. Over 80,000 titles were available for purchase on the first release. There are currently over 44 million book titles on Amazon.
According to medium.com, around 2.2 million books are published each year, and there are around 155 million books (unique titles) in the world today!
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So TKZers: What are your thoughts on the history of books? What’s your favorite book? How many books have you published? Do you write in one genre or several?
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THE WATCH MYSTERIES
Half-sisters Kathryn and Cece never meant to become sleuths, but trouble has a way of finding them. With Kathryn’s problem-solving skills and Cece’s theatrical talent, these reluctant detectives prove the search for truth is worth the effort.
Three complete novels on sale this week for 99¢ on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play.