Ever noticed how e-book features—like web links and multimedia—are creeping into p-books?
This is nothing new in the history of books. While the printing press quickly replaced the manuscript in Western Europe, printed books in Russia played a minor role for over a century after their introduction. Instead, manuscripts adopted certain characteristics of printed books. And that’s not the only parallel between early Russian printing and modern e-books.
The printing press was invented in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg in 1447. In 1563, Ivan the Terrible established the first state printing house, run by Ivan Fedorov, a deacon in the Orthodox Church. Although most of the early printed books were religious, the church was wary of the printing press. Less than ten years after he started the printing house, Ivan Fedorov was run out of town by the church. He went on to found presses elsewhere, including Lviv (in present-day Ukraine) where the first Russian alphabet book was printed in 1574. Nevertheless, the printing press remained an almost exclusive tool of the church and state for over a century, while manuscripts remained the primary means of disseminating information.
Not to say that the printed book had no effect on written material during that time period. In fact, manuscripts began to adopt characteristics of the printed book, including running page headers and page numbers. Inevitably, the printed book won out in the end, but not after a long period of coexistence, with manuscripts using printed-book “improvements” playing the primary role.
Sound familiar?
It’s not hard to find parallels between early printed books in Russia and modern e-books. The innovative form was first popularized within a small subgroup of individuals not representative of the overall population—programming guides are our new church books. At the same time, open any recent book and you’ll almost certainly find a link to the publisher’s or author’s Web site. Textbooks often include CDs of multimedia files, and references to Web sites. Like the Russian manuscript, our p-books have adopted e-book features, providing the user with some of the benefits of the innovative form in the familiar package of the old form.
E-books face different challenges than the printed book in Russia if they are to dominate the marketplace—which, I have argued is not likely anytime soon, nor even the best outcome. But suffice it to say, the current relationship between e-books and p-books is nothing new, and it may once again be a hundred years before it is fully resolved.
(Photo of Ivan Fedorov and his printing press from History of Russia: Russian Writing by Elena Filyakova.)
Quinn Anya Carey, 21, is a former Slavic Linguistics PhD student currently applying to library school to help pull her field into the digital age.
