The Switch From Scriptorium to Printing House

• Before the printing press was invented, any text to be reproduced was copied by a scribe, a person who was trained in fine penmanship and could quickly and accurately copy out a text. Many monasteries had scriptoriums where numerous scribes would work all day to copy out books and manuscripts. The printing press enabled a person to make infinite copies of a text at a pace supremely faster than copying by hand. Printing houses printed hundreds of copies a day and more as technology advanced.
  
  

Wider Audiences

• The printing press allowed for potentially thousands of copies to be made of a single text, which enabled more people to read ideas produced in lands far from their own. An idea conceived in England could reach Italy easily, and vice versa. People around Europe had access to the ideas of others and were able to absorb much more information than ever before, leading to revolutionized communication methods and the production of more ideas.
  
  

Iconography

• The printing press was useful for spreading ideas to the masses via pictures and illustration. Images were engraved into wooden or metal plates and printed en masse. This was important for communicating events and ideas to entire villages, as even illiterate people could understand them. Societal criticisms and historical events could be communicated through images and distributed to large populations.
  
  

Cross-Cultural Interchange

• The nature of print culture necessarily led to an exchange of knowledge and skills among the members of society who interacted with books and print. Before printing, skills were isolated and localized; each person with a specialized skill remained with their peers and lacked interaction with other tradesmen. Print culture brought together writers, illuminators, goldsmiths and leather workers to produce books and witness each others' trades. As well, books let a person learn about different trades through reading rather than belonging to special guilds.