Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

I wish, given the title of this blog post, that I was using it to announce some victory of my own. Every author probably feels the same way as they are waiting for their first literary offspring to make its way into the world. Publishing, by necessity, isn't a fast process, and I am not a patient soul. No, I'm not resting on my laurels while I wait, I have two other projects currently in development, but I did find myself very curious about another publishing first.

What book was the first published in the United States? I suspect that my initial desire to research this had a lot more to do with procrastination than with any deep need to know, but the results were pretty interesting, on several fronts. Not surprisingly, the first book published (in English) in the United States was a thin volume of Psalms, published by the Puritans in 1640. Apparently, the Puritans really did not approve of the King James version of the Bible. If you aren't aware, that is the most commonly used version in existence today, and arguing with it is like arguing with, well, God. But in defense of the Puritans, it wasn't commissioned until 1604, and the first copies didn't become available until 1611. If you think publishing in the modern era is slow, you should really look into how they managed this back in the day.

At any rate, the main issue the Puritans seemed to have with the King James Bible is that it represented change, and changing what they took to be the word of God seemed like a sin for sure. So they did what any enterprising conservative religious group would do, and went back as close to the source as they could, translating these Psalms from their original Hebrew. Known now as the Bay Psalm Book, it was intended to be sung a capella (without instruments) at home or at service. Although it was by no means universal, Puritans rejected music in most forms as they believed it led to laziness. The music of worship was allowed, having Biblical precedent, but instruments were not.

The print run for this book was large for the time, but hardly worth noticing by modern standards. Only approximately 1700 were printed, and of those only 11 appear to have survived to this day. 

In 2013, this book was sold at auction for a whopping $14,165,000.00 by a David M. Rubenstein of the Carlyle group, where it will share shelf space with other purchases made over the years, including the actual Magna Carta.

Wonder how much that is per word?

Cheers,

Michelle