It is called codex by way of metaphor from the trunks ( codex ) of trees or vines, as if it were a wooden stock, because it contains in itself a multitude of books, as it were of branches.

In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll.

A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page.

In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage that reflects the fact that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained.

In an unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts.

Books can consist only of drawings, engravings or photographs, crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls.

Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album.

Books may be distributed in electronic form as e-books and other formats.

An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, bookworm.

Books are also sold elsewhere and can be borrowed from libraries.

Google has estimated that by 2010, approximately 130,000,000 titles had been published.

In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of e-books.

It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood.

The Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant block of wood.

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Clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus.

They were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.

Wax tablets were pieces of wood covered in a coating of wax thick enough to record the impressions of a stylus.

They were the normal writing material in schools, in accounting, and for taking notes.

They had the advantage of being reusable: the wax could be melted, and reformed into a blank.

Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll.

The Greek word for papyrus as writing material ( biblion ) and book ( biblos ) come from the Phoenician port town Byblos, through which papyrus was exported to Greece.

From Greek we also derive the word tome ( Greek: ), which originally meant a slice or piece and from there began to denote a roll of papyrus.

Tomus was used by the Latins with exactly the same meaning as volumen (see also below the explanation by Isidore of Seville).

The more modern codex book format form took over the Roman world by late antiquity, but the scroll format persisted much longer in Asia.

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