Founded in 1977, Ross Books is a general trade publisher of books in both print and electronic format. Our catalog includes books about a variety of topics including health, cooking, music, sports, science, and more.

We are widely known for our books on holography which we have been publishing since 1982.  This has allowed us to be in on several milestones in holography such as:

First Book to Have a Mass Produced Embossed Hologram:  Ross Books happened to be publishing the first edition of the Holography Handbook in late 1981 at the same time the technique used today for mass production of embossed holograms was being perfected. One of our authors knew the scientist perfecting the process and we were allowed to be the first "trial run" customer on the embossing machine. This helped us increase the print run in our book club adoptions from both McMillan and McGraw-Hill.

We timed our printing so our books were just finishing the printing process at the time the first embossed holograms came off the machine. We had the holograms go directly from the embossing web to the bindery and into our book. Because of this, we were easily the first to publish a book with a embossed hologram. Shortly after publication, the March12, 1982 issue of Publisher's Weekly had a write up on our title. A year or two later several  other publishers came out with titles that had holograms and more than one of them claimed to be the first to publish with a hologram.

First Published Photopolymer With Video Capture: In 1995, the 5th edition of the Holography MarketPlace was published and the cover has a photopolymer hologram with 12 TV sets in it. The hologram is shot as a checkerboard array of very small holograms each of which is rendered for the angle the viewer is looking from. Consequently, as you tilt the book so you are looking at the hologram from the upper right, the TV sets rotate to that perspective. Inside each TV is a video capture of an actual TV sequence. Clinton vs. Dole debate in one and Michael Jackson in another, etc. As you tilt the book top to bottom, the video plays back. We did not know how fast to play back the sequence so different sets have different frame speeds. This technique has since been taken quite a bit further with large full color photopolymers.

First Book With a Full Color Photopolymer Hologram: The eighth edition of the Holography MarketPlace has the first full color photopolymer to be published on its cover. This was a joint effort between DuPont and DaiNippon of Japan.