In early printed books the colophon, when present, was a brief description of the printing and publication of the book, giving some or all of the following data: the date of publication, the place of publication/printing (sometimes including the address as well as the city name), the name(s) of the printer(s), and the name(s) of the publisher(s), if different. Sometimes additional information, such as the name of a proof-reader or editor, or other more or less relevant details, might be added. The normal position for a colophon was after the explicit, at the end of the text (and often right at the end of the book, after any index or register). After around 1500 this data was often transferred to the title page, which sometimes existed in parallel with a colophon.

Colophons grew generally less common in the sixteenth century. The statements of printing which appeared (under the terms of the Seditious Societies Act of 1799) on the verso of the title-leaf and final page of each book printed in Britain in the nineteenth century are not, strictly speaking, colophons, and are better referred to as "printers' imprints" or "printer statements".

With the development of the private press movement from around 1890, colophons became conventional in private press books, and often included a good deal of additional information on the book, including statements of limitation, data on paper, ink, type and binding, and other technical details. Some such books include a separate 'Note about the type', which will identify the names of the primary typefaces used, provide a brief description of the type's history and a brief statement about its most identifiable physical characteristics. Some commercial publishers took up the use of colophons, and began to include similar details in their books, either at the end of the text (the traditional position) or on the verso of the title-leaf. Such colophons might identify the book's designer, the software used, the printing method, the printing company, and the kind of ink, paper and its cotton content. Books publishers Alfred A. Knopf, the Folio Society and O'Reilly Media are notable for their substantial colophons.