Book in the context of Multipart stationery

A chapter (capitula in Latin; sommaires in French) is any of the main thematic divisions within a writing of relative length, such as a book of prose, poetry, or law. A book with chapters (not to be confused with the chapter book) may have multiple chapters that respectively comprise discrete topics or themes. In each case, chapters can be numbered, titled, or both. An example of a chapter that has become well known is "Down the Rabbit-Hole", which is the first chapter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the Italian: novella for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term romance. Such romances should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The romance, on the other hand, encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. In reality, such works are nevertheless also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century with Robinson Crusoe.

A soundtrack is a recorded audio signal accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film, video, or television presentation; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronised recorded sound.

In movie industry terminology usage, a sound track is an audio recording created or used in film production or post-production. Initially, the dialogue, sound effects, and music in a film each has its own separate track, and these are mixed together to make what is called the composite track, which is heard in the film. A dubbing track is often later created when films are dubbed into another language. This is also known as an M&E (music and effects) track. M&E tracks contain all sound elements minus dialogue, which is then supplied by the foreign distributor in the native language of its territory.

Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual history is that ideas do not develop in isolation from the thinkers who conceptualize and apply those ideas; thus the intellectual historian studies ideas in two contexts: (i) as abstract propositions for critical application; and (ii) in concrete terms of culture, life, and history.

As a field of intellectual enquiry, the history of ideas emerged from the European disciplines of Kulturgeschichte (Cultural History) and Geistesgeschichte (Intellectual History) from which historians might develop a global intellectual history that shows the parallels and the interrelations in the history of critical thinking in every society. Likewise, the history of reading, and the history of the book, about the material aspects of book production (design, manufacture, distribution) developed from the history of ideas.

In law, codification is the process of collecting and restating the law of a jurisdiction in certain areas, usually by subject, forming a legal code, i.e. a codex (book) of law.

Codification is one of the defining features for most civil law jurisdictions. In common law systems, such as that of English law, codification is the process of converting and consolidating judge-made law or uncodified statutes enacted by the legislature into codified statute law.

The codex (pl.: codices /ˈkoʊdɪsiːz/) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. However, the term codex is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.

By convention, the term is also used for any Aztec codex (although the earlier examples do not actually use the codex format), Maya codices and other pre-Columbian manuscripts. Library practices have led to many European manuscripts having "codex" as part of their usual name, as with the Codex Gigas, while most do not.

A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location, a virtual space, or both. A library's collection normally includes printed materials which can be borrowed, and usually also includes a reference section of publications which may only be utilized inside the premises. Resources such as commercial releases of films, television programmes, other video recordings, radio, music and audio recordings may be available in many formats. These include DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, or other applicable formats such as microform. They may also provide access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases. In addition, some libraries offer creation stations for makers which offer access to a 3D printing station with a 3D scanner.

Libraries can vary widely in size and may be organised and maintained by a public body such as a government, an institution (such as a school or museum), a corporation, or a private individual. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are trained experts in finding, selecting, circulating and organising information while interpreting information needs and navigating and analysing large amounts of information with a variety of resources. The area of study is known as library and information science or studies.

Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper (or, in earlier centuries, papyrus or parchment). However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of scores on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.

The use of the term sheet is intended to differentiate written or printed forms of music from sound recordings (on vinyl record, cassette, CD), radio or TV broadcasts or recorded live performances, which may capture film or video footage of the performance as well as the audio component. In everyday use, sheet music (or simply music) can refer to the print publication of commercial sheet music in conjunction with the release of a new film, TV show, record album, or other unique or popular event which involves music. The first printed sheet music made with a printing press was made in 1473.

Recto is the "right" or "front" side and verso is the "left" or "back" side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper (folium) in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet.

In double-sided printing, each leaf has two pages – front and back. In modern books, the physical sheets of paper are stacked and folded in half, producing two leaves and four pages for each sheet. For example, the outer sheet in a 16-page book will have one leaf with pages 1 (recto) and 2 (verso), and another leaf with pages 15 (recto) and 16 (verso). Pages 1 and 16, for example, are printed on the same side of the physical sheet of paper, combining recto and verso sides of different leaves. The number of pages in a book using this binding technique must thus be a multiple of four, and the number of leaves must be a multiple of two, but unused pages are typically left unnumbered and uncounted. A sheet folded in this manner is known as a folio, a word also used for a book or pamphlet made with this technique.

Literary work is a generic term for works of literature, i.e. texts such as fiction and non-fiction books, essays, screenplays.

In the philosophy of art and the field of aesthetics there is some debate about what that means, precisely.

A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together the pages of a book. Beyond the familiar distinction between hardcovers and paperbacks, there are further alternatives and additions, such as dust jackets, ring-binding, and older forms such as the nineteenth-century "paper-boards" and the traditional types of hand-binding. The term bookcover is also commonly used for a book cover image in library management software. This article is concerned with modern mechanically produced covers.

Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. To bind a book, groups of pages are joined together, often by thread or adhesive but other options exist such as loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs. A cover to protect the contents, usually bearing publication information such as title and author, is generally attached; this can be as simple as a single sheet of paper or an elaborate construction of boards covered in cloth, leather, parchment, etc. with many types of decoration. Processes of making books vary significantly by time period and geography/culture. Mechanised bookbinding was introduced in the 19th century with the industrial revolution, alongside machine papermaking, faster methods of leather tanning, and other changes in manufacturing that affected the book.

The trade of bookbinding includes the binding of blank books and printed books. Blank books, or stationery bindings, are books planned to be written in. These include accounting ledgers, guestbooks, logbooks, notebooks, manifold books, day books, diaries, and sketchbooks. Printed books are produced through letterpress printing, offset lithography, or other printing techniques and their binding practices include fine binding, edition binding, publisher's bindings, and library binding.

In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is called authorship, which means a sculptor, painter, or composer is considered the author of their respective sculptures, paintings, or musical compositions. Although in common usage, the term "author" is often associated specifically with the writer of a book, article, play, or other written work. In cases involving a work for hire, the employer or commissioning party is legally considered the author of the work, even if it was created by someone else.

Typically, the first owner of a copyright is the creator of the copyrighted work, i.e., the author. If more than one person created the work, then joint authorship has taken place. Copyright law differs around the world. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of 'original works of authorship.'"

The Walk of Ideas was a set of six sculptures in central Berlin designed by Scholz & Friends for the 2006 FIFA World Cup football event in Germany. The sculptures, part of a campaign called Welcome to Germany – the Land of Ideas, were put up between 10 March 2006 and 19 May 2006. The opening of the exhibition was covered by reporters for the international mass media. The sculptures were on display until September 2006.

An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Although sometimes defined as "an electronic version of a printed book", some e-books exist without a printed equivalent. E-books can be read on dedicated e-reader devices, also on any computer device that features a controllable viewing screen, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

In the 2000s, there was a trend of print and e-book sales moving to the Internet, where readers buy traditional paper books and e-books on websites using e-commerce systems. With print books, readers are increasingly browsing through images of the covers of books on publisher or bookstore websites and selecting and ordering titles online. The paper books are then delivered to the reader by mail or any other delivery service. With e-books, users can browse through titles online, select and order titles, then the e-book can be sent to them online or the user can download the e-book. By the early 2010s, e-books had begun to overtake hardcover by overall publication figures in the U.S.

The Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42, was the earliest major book printed in Europe using mass-produced metal movable type. It marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed books in the West. The book is valued and revered for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities and its historical significance.

The Gutenberg Bible is an edition of the Latin Vulgate printed in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz (Holy Roman Empire), in present-day Germany. Out of either 158 or 180 copies that were originally printed, 49 survive in at least substantial portion, 21 of them in entirety; of these, the copy with the earliest visible print date is marked as 15 August 1456. They are thought to be among the world's most valuable books, although no complete copy has been sold since 1978. In March 1455, the future Pope Pius II wrote that he had seen pages from the Gutenberg Bible, displayed in Frankfurt to promote the edition.

A glossary (from Ancient Greek: γλῶσσα, glossa; language, speech, wording), also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a book and includes terms within that book that are either newly introduced, uncommon, or specialized. While glossaries are most commonly associated with non-fiction books, in some cases, fiction novels sometimes include a glossary for unfamiliar terms.

A bilingual glossary is a list of terms in one language defined in a second language or glossed by synonyms (or at least near-synonyms) in another language.