Jobs in Book Production before the Printing Press

The Book Trade was an Intricate Net of Professions Before the Invention of the Printing Press
The trade of producing a copy of a book was not simply given to one type of occupation. To produce books, occupations such as Scriveners, limmers, binders, and stationers existed for each step of the book trade from actually making a copy to selling it. Since the copying of a book was done by hand, it took much more labor and time to produce a single copy of a book. This large time and effort commitment to each copy of a book translated into books being highly unavailable and highly priced before the invention of the European printing press. Once the European printing press was invented, book prices dropped to about a third of what they were before and were widely more available and common for anyone to purchase. The invention of the printing press virtually destroyed the need for these occupations as their jobs could be done more effectively and cheaper by presses.