History of book Publishing

History and Aesthetics of the Book
“7th to 13th Century: The age of religious "manuscript" book production. Books in this period are entirely constructed by hand, and are largely religious texts whose creation is meant as an act of worship. 13th to 15th Century: The secularization of book production. Books are beginning to be produced that do not serve as objects of worship, but that try to explain something about the observable world. The difficulty with the spread of such knowledge is that production is still taking place via pre-print - manuscript - methods.” From Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World
From this article I can understand that democracy and freedom are essential for the development of book publishing. Lack of freedom of expressing non-religious thoughts between the 7th and 13th Centuries limited book production only to religious manuscripts. When there is freedom of writing, authors can write on any issues, publish and distribute it to the general public. This helps for the development of book publishing.
The article “Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World” stated, that the Crusaders in the 13th century brought with them texts from Byzantium when they returned from the Crusade War. This shows international relations are the most important thing for the development of book publishing. One part of the world may have the advanced technology for book publishing; the other country may have human power to produce books therefore strong correlation among countries is crucial for the development of book publishing.
As the article “Manuscripts, Books, and Maps: The Printing Press and a Changing World” also stated the lack of a uniform cataloging system in the libraries. Even though one had access to the library of a monastery, there was no way of knowing what was in the collection, or where it is located due to lack of technology to access the book. Now that computers solved the problem, we can search the books we want in catalog in the library and get it any time. This shows that the advancement in technology is important for accessing books.
From the guest speaker Anna Arnar, Professor of Art History, I learned we can study the history of books by studying the history of religion because people used books to spread their religion at different times in history. Because there were neither authors' nor publishing rights back in those days, anyone could have a text recopied, and even alter its contents, and earn money while authors earn nothing. Authors faced several problems. This is happening a lot in the developing countries until this day. Authors in the developing countries have only names but they are financially weak due to copy right issues. From these historical perspectives we can learn that there should be copy right laws and it should be respected. History is about the future. Unless we learned from history and make changes, we will repeat historical mistakes again.