Jessica Gössl

Before 1750, there were about 100 new titles each year.

By 1825, there were 600, and by the end of the century, there were 6,000 new books each year.

Many of the big publishers still in operation today were founded in the 19th century or the early 20th.

Macmillan, for example, was founded in London in 1843 and published Victorian classics like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Simon & Schuster began publishing books of crossword puzzles in 1924 and grew to become one of the largest publishers in the U.S.,

In the UK, in 1935, a man named Alan Lane was disappointed by the quality of the books on offer at a train station.

He was inspired to create a company that specialized in cheap but well-designed paperbacks, Penguin Books.

Penguin quickly became successful and had a significant impact on British culture.

introducing readers to classic literature and thought-provoking politics.

Books were now more popular and accessible than ever before, particularly in the US and Europe, but also in other parts of the world.

The Soviet Union, for example, published huge quantities of books.

For Spanish language titles, Buenos Aires was a publishing hub, while Cairo produced many thousands of books in Arabic.

By the 20th century, virtually every country and every language had its own book culture.

In many ways, the 20th century was the golden age of the book.

Publishers also began to experiment with different formats.

The audiobook, first designed for visually impaired readers, was invented in the 1930s.

The first audiobooks were known as talking books and were published on vinyl records.

they reached a wider audience in the 1970s with the appearance of the cassette tape and then portable audio players like the walkman then came the cd and the mp3 these days audio books are very popular

It's an accessible format that allows people to enjoy a good book while driving or doing other tasks.

However, studies suggest that if you give an audiobook your full attention, listening is much the same as reading a book.