The craft of bookbinding originated in India, where religious sutra were copied onto palm leaves (cut into two, lengthwise) with a metal stylus. The leaf was then dried and rubbed with ink, which would form a stain in the wound. The finished leaves were given numbers, and two long twines were threaded through each end through wooden boards. When closed, the excess twine would be wrapped around the boards to protect the leaves of the book. Buddhist monks took the idea through modern Persia, Afghanistan, and Iran, to China in the first century BC.

Western writers at this time wrote longer texts as scrolls, and these were stored in shelving with small cubbyholes, similar to a modern winerack. The word volume, from the Latin wordvolvere (”to roll”), comes from these scrolls. Court records and notes were written on tree bark and leaves, while important documents were written on papyrus. The modern English wordbook comes from the Proto-Germanic *bokiz, referring to the beechwood on which early written works were recorded.

The book was not needed in ancient times, as many early Greek texts—scrolls—were thirty pages long, which fits into the hand. Roman works were often longer, running to hundreds of pages. The Greeks used to comically call their books tome, meaning “to cut”. The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a massive 200 pages long but was never meant to be read by the living. Torahs, editions of the Jewish holy book, were also held in special holders when read.

Scrolls can be rolled in one of two ways. The first method is to wrap the scroll around a single core, similar to a modern roll of paper towels. While simple to construct, a single core scroll has a major disadvantage: in order to read text at the end of the scroll, the entire scroll must be unwound. This is partially overcome in the second method, which is to wrap the scroll around two cores, as in a Torah. With a double scroll, the text can be accessed from both beginning and end, and the portions of the scroll not being read can remain wound. This still leaves the scroll a sequential-access medium: to reach a given page, one generally has to unroll and re-roll many other pages.

The first solution invented to overcome this problem was a set of simple wooden boards sewn together, around the 1st century A.D. Romans called this simple book a codex—the Latin for the trunk of a tree. However, it was the early Coptic Christians of Egypt who made the first breakthrough. They discovered that by folding sheets of vellum or parchment in half and sewing them through the fold, they could produce a book that could be written on both sides. Wooden boards held it together, and the whole book was slipped into a goatskin leather bag to be carried.

Codices were a significant improvement over papyrus or vellum scrolls in that they were easier to handle. But despite allowing writing on both sides of the leaves, they were still foliated—numbered on the leaves, like the Indian books. The idea spread quickly through the early churches, and we get the word bible from the town where the Byzantium monks established their first scriptorium, Byblos, in modern Lebanon. The idea of numbering each side of the page—Latin pagina, “to fasten”—appeared when the text of the individual testaments of the bible were combined and text had to be searched through more quickly. This book format became the preferred way of preserving manuscript or printed material.

Early and medieval codices were bound with flat spines, and it was not until the 15th century that books began to have the rounded spines associated with hardcovers today. Because the vellum of early books would react to humidity by swelling, causing the book to take on a characteristic wedge shape, the wooden covers of medieval books were often secured with straps or clasps. These straps, along with metal bosses on the book’s covers to keep it raised off of the surface that it rests on, are collectively known as furniture.

Thus, Western books from the 5th century onwards were bound between hard covers, with pages made from parchment folded and sewn onto strong cords or ligaments that were attached to wooden boards and covered with leather. Since early books were exclusively handwritten on handmade materials, sizes and styles varied considerably, and each book was a unique creation or a copy of it.

The Arabs revolutionised the book production and its binding. They were the first to produce paper books after they learnt paper industry from the Chinese in 8th century. Particular skills were developed for script writing (calligraphy), miniature and bookbinding. The people who worked in making books were called “Warraqin” or paper professionals. The Arabs made books lighter—sewn with silk and bound with leather covered paste boards, they had a flap that wrapped the book up when not in use. As paper was less reactive to humidity, the heavy boards were not needed. The production of books became a real industry and cities like Marrakech in Morocco, had a street named “Kutubiyyin” or book sellers which contained more than 100 bookshops in the12th century. In the words of Don Baker: “The world of Islam has produced some of the most beautiful books ever created. The need to write down the Revelations which the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be upon him, received, fostered the desire to beautify the object which conveyed these words and initiated this ancient craft. Nowhere else, except perhaps in China, has calligraphy been held in such high esteem. Splendid illumination was added with gold and vibrant colours, and the whole book contained and protected by beautiful bookbindings

The binding of a Chinese bamboo book.

With the arrival (from the East) of rag paper manufacturing in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the use of the printing press beginning in the mid-15th century, bookbinding began to standardize somewhat, but page sizes still varied considerably.

With printing, the books became more accessible and were stored on their side on long shelves for the first time. Clasps were removed, and titles were added to the spine. The reduced cost of books facilitated cheap lightweight Bibles, made from tissue-thin oxford paper, with floppy covers, that resembled the early Arabic Korans, enabling missionaries to take portable books with them around the world, and modern wood glues enabled paperback covers to be added to simple glue bindings.