130 Fun Facts About Book
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Take the 130-question quizFrom which Old English word does 'book' come?
Old Norse has bok and Old Saxon bok.
Roughly how many unique books had been published in total, by Google's 2010 estimate?
Google Books had scanned over 40 million by 2019.
What is the name of the format, of pages bound at one edge, that replaced the scroll?
The Romans developed it from wax tablets.
According to Guinness World Records, what is the best-selling book of all time?
An estimated 5 to 7 billion copies.
What is the estimated total sales figure for the Christian Bible?
It is translated into about half the world's languages.
Which series has sold more than 600 million copies, the most in history?
It roughly ties with the manga One Piece.
How many publishers rejected the first Potter book before Bloomsbury took it?
Scholastic published it in the US.
Which novel, published in 1605 and 1615, is believed to have sold over half a billion copies?
It is often called the first modern novel.
Which book became the world's most translated non-religious book in 2017?
It reached 600 languages and dialects by 2024.
Who is the best-selling novelist of all time, with more than two billion copies sold?
Her books appear in 44 languages.
Which Charles Dickens novel of 1859 is often claimed as one of the best-selling novels ever?
It is set in London and Paris during the French Revolution.
Which Chinese title, the 'Little Red Book', has print estimates of up to 6.5 billion?
Over a billion volumes were printed from 1966 to 1969 alone.
What is the oldest extant printed book, dated 11 May 868?
It was found in the Dunhuang caves and is in the British Library.
What unusual dedication appears in the colophon of the oldest printed book?
The first known explicit public-domain dedication.
Who invented movable type around 1040 AD, using ceramic characters?
During China's Northern Song dynasty.
What is the oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, from Korea in 1377?
From the Goryeo dynasty.
What was Johannes Gutenberg's trade before he developed the printing press around 1440?
His metalworking skill helped him cast type.
In which city did Gutenberg print his Bible in the 1450s?
The press spread to about 270 cities within decades.
How many lines per page give Gutenberg's Bible its alternative name?
Also called the Mazarin Bible or B42.
How many Gutenberg Bibles survive in substantial portion?
Twenty-one are complete; none has been sold since 1978.
How many copies had Western Europe's presses produced by 1500?
Books from before 1500 are called incunabula.
What is a book printed in Europe before 1501 called?
The Latin means 'swaddling clothes' or 'cradle'.
Which Venetian printer introduced italic type in 1501 and used a dolphin-and-anchor device?
His motto was festina lente, 'make haste slowly'.
Which punctuation mark did the Venetian printer Manutius help standardise?
Along with the comma.
What was the first title printed in British North America, in 1640?
A copy sold for $14.2 million in 2013.
How much did a Bay Psalm Book fetch at auction in 2013, a record for a printed volume?
One of eleven surviving first-edition copies.
Who bought Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester for $30.8m in 1994?
It was then the most expensive manuscript ever sold.
What is the main topic of the Codex Leicester?
Written in Leonardo's mirror script.
In what undeciphered script is the Voynich manuscript written?
Its vellum dates from 1404 to 1438.
Where has the Voynich manuscript been held since 1969?
Catalogued as MS 408.
What was the first name of the Polish book dealer who bought the undeciphered manuscript in 1912?
He bought it in 1912.
What is the largest extant medieval illuminated manuscript, nicknamed the Devil's Bible?
It is 92 cm long and kept in Stockholm.
According to legend, how was the giant 92 cm manuscript in Stockholm written?
A walled-up monk supposedly made a pact.
Where is the Book of Kells on display?
Two pages are shown at a time, rotated every 12 weeks.
What is written on the leaves of the Book of Kells?
It contains the four Gospels in Latin.
The ancient Egyptian writing sheet was made from the pith of which plant?
It once grew abundantly across the Nile Delta.
The word 'parchment' comes from the name of which ancient city?
Legend says it replaced papyrus monopolised by Alexandria.
Vellum is traditionally made from the skin of which animal?
From Latin vitulinum, 'made from calf'.
What is a casebound book's rigid cover typically made of?
Also called casebound.
Who launched the Penguin paperback revolution in 1935 with ten reprint titles?
His brothers Richard and John co-founded it.
For how much were the first Penguin paperbacks sold in the 1930s?
Woolworths' order of 63,000 books paid for the project.
What was the first book on Penguin's 1935 list?
A biography of Shelley.
Which US paperback imprint did Robert de Graaf create in 1939 with Simon & Schuster?
'Pocket book' became a synonym for paperback in North America.
Which German publisher revised the paperback format in 1931 with colour-coded covers?
World War II cut the experiment short.
Which American publisher merged with Penguin in 2013?
Bertelsmann now wholly owns it.
Roughly what share of the US trade book market did the 'Big Five' publishers control in 2022?
Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan.
How many digits does an ISBN assigned since 1 January 2007 have?
Compatible with 'Bookland' EAN barcodes.
In what year was the first ISBN format devised?
Based on the 9-digit SBN of 1966.
Which Trinity College Dublin statistics professor devised the original book-numbering system?
He was hired as a consultant.
Do the e-book, paperback and casebound editions of the same book share one ISBN?
An unchanged reprint keeps the same ISBN.
What was the first name of the librarian who published his decimal classification in 1876?
It began as a 44-page pamphlet.
In how many libraries was the Dewey system in use as of 2009?
In at least 135 countries.
Which Dewey class contains literature, including fiction?
European literature takes 810 to 889.
Which is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, founded in 1800?
It holds about 173 million items.
Whose personal library of 6,487 books restored Congress's collection after the British burned it in 1814?
Congress paid $23,950 in 1815.
Roughly how many items does the US national library on Capitol Hill hold?
In more than 470 languages.
In what year was the British Library created?
By the British Library Act 1972.
Which king's 65,000-volume collection sits in a glass tower inside the British Library?
Collected between 1763 and 1820.
How many legal deposit libraries are there under UK law?
Including Trinity College Dublin.
Which 1537 French ordinance began legal deposit of books to the king's library?
For conservation purposes.
Who founded Oxford's Bodleian Library in 1602?
It is one of Europe's oldest libraries.
Which Roman is said to have accidentally burned the Library of Alexandria in 48 BC?
It seems to have survived or been rebuilt afterwards.
Which Warsaw institution of 1732 is regarded as the oldest modern public library?
It evolved into the National Library of Poland.
Which Maryland librarian cemented the idea of a horse-drawn 'book wagon' in 1905?
An earlier perambulating library ran in Warrington in 1858.
Who built the first Little Free Library in Hudson, Wisconsin, in 2009?
A tribute to his mother, a book-loving teacher.
The first Little Free Library was designed to look like what?
Over 150,000 are now registered.
On what date is UNESCO's World Book Day?
The death date of Cervantes and Shakespeare in 1616.
Which author did the original Spanish Book Day, conceived in 1922, honour?
It moved from his birthday to his death date in 1930.
Who coined the word 'blurb' in 1906?
On the jacket of his book Are You a Bromide?
Whose praise did Walt Whitman stamp in gold on the spine of Leaves of Grass, an early blurb?
'I greet you at the beginning of a great career.'
On what kind of publication was the oldest recorded publisher's dust jacket, from 1829, issued?
Friendship's Offering for 1830.
What is the Latin phrase for a bookplate marking ownership?
'From the books of'.
What is the term for the largest traditional book size, above quarto and octavo?
A quarto is a sheet folded twice, giving four leaves.
Who does Pliny the Elder credit as the first to attach a list of contents to a written work?
Pliny made one for his own Natural History.
How does a foreword conventionally differ from a preface?
Foreword, then preface, then introduction.
What is the term for a printer paid by authors to publish their own books?
Also called a subsidy publisher.
The 'authors' of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Carolyn Keene and Franklin W. Dixon, were what?
The Stratemeyer Syndicate hired the writers.
In which year was the term 'best seller' first recorded in print, in a Kansas City newspaper?
The Kansas Times & Star.
Which magazine published America's first best-seller list, in 1895?
The New York Times did not start one until 1931.
When did The New York Times begin publishing its weekly best-seller list?
Initially for New York City sales only.
Which Voltaire novel sold more than 20,000 copies in its first month in 1759?
An early bestseller.
In what year did Oprah Winfrey start her book club?
It recommended 70 books over 15 years.
Which memoir chosen by Oprah's Book Club was exposed as largely fabricated?
James Frey was confronted on live television.
Which novelist publicly bristled at his book The Corrections being an Oprah pick?
The club moved 55 million 'Oprah editions' overall.
What was the Book of the Month Club's first selection in 1926?
Founded in New York City.
What was Amazon's internal codename for the Kindle?
Branding consultants Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma named it Kindle.
In what year was the first Kindle released?
On November 19.
Which Amazon subsidiary developed the Kindle hardware?
Bezos wanted 'the world's best electronic reader'.
By the early 2010s, e-books had begun to overtake which format in US publication figures?
Lower prices and convenience drove sales.
What did Amazon raise the KDP e-book royalty rate to in 2010, to compete with Apple?
Up from 35%, with conditions.
What did Michael Hart digitise to begin Project Gutenberg in 1971?
He typed it in and sent it over the network.
Who founded the Internet Archive in 1996?
Its Wayback Machine holds over a trillion captures.
What was the search giant's book-scanning programme first called when unveiled in October 2004?
By 2019 it had scanned over 40 million titles.
What was the term for recorded books in the 1930s, before 'audiobook'?
Government programs for blind readers.
Whose poems were the first release of audiobook pioneer Caedmon Records in 1952?
Read by the poet himself.
Which novel holds the Guinness World Record for longest novel?
Proust's madeleine appears in its first volume.
Who created the concept of the Guinness Book of Records to settle pub arguments?
After a dispute about the golden plover.
Who won the first Booker Prize in 1969?
For Something to Answer For.
How much does the Booker Prize winner receive?
Plus a big sales boost.
Who was the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice?
Three others have since done it.
Which four authors have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice?
Colson Whitehead is the most recent.
Which Hemingway novel was denied a Pulitzer in 1941 after Columbia's president objected?
No award was given that year.
Who was the first Nobel laureate in Literature, in 1901?
A French poet and essayist.
Who is the youngest Nobel Literature laureate, aged 41 in 1907?
Author of The Jungle Book.
Which philosopher declined the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964?
Pasternak was forced to decline in 1958.
Which award, first given in 1922, was the world's first children's book award?
Named after an 18th-century English publisher.
Who won the first children's book award in 1922, for The Story of Mankind?
In 1922, for a book published in 1921.
The Caldecott Medal recognises the previous year's most distinguished American what?
It goes to the illustrator.
The Hugo Award is named after the founder of which magazine?
Hugo Gernsback, a 'father' of science fiction.
In what year did the OED begin publication?
Work had begun in 1857.
Which verb had the longest entry in the second edition of the OED?
60,000 words covering some 580 senses.
In which city was the Encyclopaedia Britannica first published, from 1768?
In weekly instalments forming three volumes.
When was Britannica's final print edition, a 32-volume set?
Print was ended in March 2012.
Which city hosts the world's largest book trade fair, each October?
It has a tradition of over 500 years.
Which American bookseller has the largest number of retail outlets in the United States?
Its origins go back to 1886.
Who founded Waterstones in 1982 after a £6,000 redundancy payout?
He had been made redundant by WHSmith.
Which two men produced some of the first three-dimensional, tab-activated pop-up books?
Maurice Sendak collected Meggendorfer's books.
What was the first modern American-style comic book, released in 1933?
It reprinted newspaper strips.
What is the typical English reading speed for most adults?
Claims of 1,000 wpm are viewed with scepticism.
Which German poet wrote 'Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn people'?
His own books were burned by the Nazis in Berlin.
Which Chinese dynasty is notorious for burning books and burying scholars around 213 BCE?
Shang Yang had urged burning books a century earlier.
Which two 19th-century writers found success through self-publishing?
Proust and Beatrix Potter also self-published.
Which innovation of the Aldine Press made classical texts portable?
About five by eight inches.
Cuneiform tablets from about 3200 BC, the earliest surviving writing, come from which modern country?
They emerged during the Uruk period from a tradition of sealed clay envelopes called bullae, and stayed in use for thousands of years.
The Germanic root behind the word 'book' is thought to refer to which tree?
Slavic words for 'letter', like the Russian bukva, share the same cognate, hinting that early writing was carved on wood.
In which country had ebook readership overtaken paper books by 2016?
Super apps such as WeChat helped drive the shift, while most countries still publish more physical books than digital ones.
Which late-19th-century typecasting machine set an entire line of type at once, unlike Monotype?
Monotype, which cast one letter at a time, was the machine used most heavily in book publishing.
Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican scribes wrote codices on long folded strips of which material?
Called amatl, the strips were bound between wooden planks; the oldest surviving Maya codex dates to the 11th century.
The earliest audiobooks were phonograph records produced by which organisation?
Cassettes in the 1960s and CDs in the 1980s drew in retailers, but digital distribution made the market explode.
In which century BC did Indian scribes begin recording oral history on palm-leaf manuscripts?
The technique spread to Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Tibet, with text etched into the leaves.
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