Was the printing press fun to use?

Answer 1

The original printing press was very tedious to use:

• You had to hand carve a wooden plank with what you wanted to print
• You had to manually roll ink on the plank for each copy
• You had to manually place a sheet of paper over the inked plank
• You had to insert the plank and paper into the screw press
• You had to rotate the arm of the screw press hard to get enough pressure to evenly transfer the ink
• You had to rotate the arm back to remove pressure
• You had to remove the plank and paper from the screw press
• You had to lift the printed page from the plank
• You had to reink the plank and repeat

Needless to say most printers limited themselves to printing one page Broadsides.

The introduction of movable type just simplified setting up the page, all the printing steps remained the same. But it did make multiple page printed books and pamphlets practical.