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.
Before the early nineteenth century, books were hand-bound, in the case of luxury medieval manuscripts in treasure bindings using materials such as gold, silver and jewels.
For hundreds of years, book bindings had functioned as a protective device for the expensively printed or hand-made pages, and as a decorative tribute to their cultural authority.
Covers now give detailed hints about the style, genre and subject of the book, while many push design to its limit in the hope of attracting sales attention.
Since February 2024, several German libraries started to block public access to their stock of 19th century books to check for the degree of poisoning.