Jeremy Norman’sHistoryofInformation.com Exploring the History of Information and Media through Timelines
Jeremy Norman’s
![First leaf of the first book printed in Venice, Cicero, Epistolae ad familiares by Johannes de Spira, [before September 18,] 1469. From the copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. This is ISTC ic00504000. The ISTC also describes a variant issued presumably on or around the same date by Spira: ISTC ic00505000.](http://historyofinformation.com/images/Screen_Shot_2019-07-19_at_3.02.07_PM.png "First leaf of the first book printed in Venice, Cicero, Epistolae ad familiares by Johannes de Spira, [before September 18,] 1469. From the copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. This is ISTC ic00504000. The ISTC also describes a variant issued presumably on or around the same date by Spira: ISTC ic00505000.")
First leaf of the first book printed in Venice, Cicero, Epistolae ad familiares by Johannes de Spira, [before September 18,] 1469. From the copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice. This is ISTC ic00504000. The ISTC also describes a variant issued presumably on or around the same date by Spira: ISTC ic00505000.
"From 1469 to the end of the fifteenth century, 153 printers [in Venice] printed 4,500 titles. If we estimate a run of 300 copies per title, this means that Venetian presses produced 1,350,000 volumes, equal to 15 percent of the European total (and this is a conservative estimate). Keep in mind that the number of Gutenberg Bibles is now estimated at around 200 copies, and the first book printed in Venice, Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares, had a run of 100 copies, but when they were all sold, in just three months, a second edition was printed in 300 copies.
"In the sixteenth century, at least 690 printers and publishers printed more than 15,000 titles, with an average run of around 1000 copies, but with high points of between 2,000 and 3,000 for works that were expected to achieve massive sales, at a pace of 150 editions per year (we can't report the number of titles, because some books, the Bible, for example, had more than one printer)...."(Magno, Bound in Venice. The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book [2013] 30).