When I was at school in the 1980s, being a writer seemed an unlikely aspiration. Special people were writers, not Kent school boys who happened to like reading. But then, after years of frustrated effort, something happened, maybe around 2010, when I caught up with the fact that the computer on my desk now allowed anyone to have a go at being a published writer. Publish yourself. But what sort of books would I write? Who was I and who would read my work? Today, writers can work in a bewildering variety of genres tailored to certain groups of readers. It’s as though each group can aspire to have their own books. Wondering how I might fit in with all this, I have long pondered on how books ended up where they are today. The following is the result of my pondering.

To begin at the beginning, all contemporary categories of writing are descended from an original single category of book which existed when the printing press first appeared around 1440 – the Bible, or books about the Bible. In 1440, very few people could read, and books were prohibitively expensive. Writers are sometimes known as authors, and that word author – derived from the word authority – is very much a hang over from the time when “divinity” was, in effect, literature’s only genre. The ultimate author was the writer of the Bible. And with printing still in its infancy, this book reached people not through people reading it, but through the Church telling people about it.

The invention of the printing press also coincided with a rediscovery of Greek and Roman writers. These rediscovered classical texts almost immediately began to widen the scope of literature, even if the writers of these works were themselves considered as semi-divine sources of authority and wisdom.

One of the great social convulsions of Western culture soon followed. And it was all to do with reading. Into the sixteenth century, improved printing press design, some increase in literacy, and a new-fangled brand of Christianity called Protestantism, allowed people to start reading the Bible for themselves. Ironically this opportunity for individuals to read the Bible, marked the beginning of the end for the power of a single book. If people were reading the Bible, they could also read other stuff – maybe the Greek and Roman writers who were coming into print. And this natural tendency towards a widening viewpoint could only continue to develop as literacy rates crept up, and printing technology made headway in reducing book prices.

By 1700, academic Jeremiah Dittmar estimates that there were around eighty basic varieties of book serving an enlarged, but still modest, book market, where divinity continued to account for half of all sales. Through the next three hundred years, the rate of change gathered pace. The nineteenth century saw the beginnings of children’s literature as its own specific category. The 1950s and 1960s saw early examples of what is now known as YA. Then, into the twenty first century, literacy in large parts of the world had become almost universal. The advent of digital publication offered lower book prices for readers and the opportunity for anyone to be a published writer. The result has been an explosion of genre varieties, so that the current situation in publishing is the opposite of what it once was in 1440. Whereas in the fifteenth century everyone shared the same book, now it’s almost as though everyone expects to have their own book, unique to their own part of life. The bewildering variety of genres reflects the fact that today almost everyone is a potential reader, or writer.

It is of course a great thing that perspectives and viewpoints presented in books have increased out of all recognition. And yet, this new culture is also a fragmented one, with people tending to live increasingly in their own cultural bubbles. Writers write based on their own experience, so it’s inevitable that people similar to themselves are more likely to resonate with their work. Nevertheless, I think in some small way, any writer instinctively harks back to 1440, when there was one book for everyone. Writing has to manage that trick of reflecting its readership, while not confining them. A book should be a means of offering a wider perspective rather than closing the door. After all, a bestseller is by definition a book that crosses divides, appeals to lots of different people, and echoes in a small way that situation right at the beginning of publishing when a book was something that everyone shared in together.