How were medieval books produced?

Answer 1

During the Middle Ages, books were copied by hand. Typically, a number of people would work in a room together. One would read a text, and the others, who were the scribes, would write what they heard. Each scribe produced one copy of what was read, and so when the reader finished reading the book, each scribe had written a single copy of it. This work was usually done in monasteries, but there were people who had private copyists. For example, Christine de Pizan seems to have supervised the production of the books of her own poetry.

The Renaissance started with books being produced by scribes. But in the middle of the 15th century, the invention of printing became known, and this made book production much easier. Using this method, lead alloy was cast into type. Each piece of type had the raised image of one letter, or sometimes two or three. Letters were assembled into lines of type, and the lines were assembled into pages and placed in groupings called forms, each containing 1, 2, 4, or 8 pages. The forms were inked, with the raised letters being the only part to get ink, and paper pressed against them by a printing press.

The press could produce about 2000 impressions per day, so if a 2 page form was used, 4000 pages would be produced each day. If 1000 copies of a 400 page book were wanted, a crew of 4 printers might produce it in about 100 working days. So the job took 400 man days, or 0.4 man days per book.

Copying by hand, a single scribe might have produced 2 large pages a day. If 1000 copies of a 400 page book were needed, it would take 1000 scribes 200 working days to do the job. So the job took 200,000 man days, or 200 man days per book.

Books became common in the Renaissance. Where during the Middle Ages, a book was a treasure, and a wealthy person might own a few, during the Renaissance, libraries could fill rooms. Aldus Manutius invented a special, narrow typeface, called Italic, and began using it to produce books so small they could be fit into peoples' pockets. Shops that sold used books started to open. And the next thing you knew, peasants were reading.

Answer 2

In the Middle Ages, books had to be produced by hand. Each letter on every page of every copy had to be printed with pen and ink. Most books were produced by monks or nuns in monasteries. Some were produced commercially. They were very expensive, and after the cost of building the structure itself, The Bible was often the most expensive thing to consider in starting up a new church.