The
invention of writing was amazing.
Developing an alphabet and a uniform set of rules to govern a language
is also amazing. But when mass printing
with movable type became available some 550 years ago it was nothing short of
revolutionary, much the way the Internet these past 20-25 years has forever
altered how the world communicates and conducts life. I came across a 2002 book
by John Man, Gutenberg: How One Man Remade The World with Words,
and it manages to rekindle the significance of what took place when Germany’s
Johann Gutenberg, invented movable type printing presses.
He
singlehandedly ignited an explosion of art, literature, and scientific
research. The book’s back cover sums up the book perfectly: “In Gutenberg, you’ll meet the genius who
fostered this revolution, discover the surprising ambitions that drove him, and
learn how a single obscure artisan changed the course of history.”
Just
before he printed his first book, The
Gutenberg Bible, in 1454 or so, Europe’s books were hand-copied and all
existing copies of books probably didn’t equal what a modern public library
holds. But by the debut of the 16th
century, the number of printed copies of books exceeded millions of units. This single artisan changed the course of
history.
Man
notes that “Printing changed things so utterly that it is hard to imagine a
world without it…The result, of course, was a new world of communication. Suddenly, in a historical eye blink scribes
were redundant. One year, it took a
month or two to produce a single copy of a book; the next, you could have 500
copies in a week (500 was an average print run in the early days).”
Books
hold great thoughts, most borrowed and some original. They are perfectly suited to provide an
examination of all of life, or more aptly, a tiny sliver of life in a snapshot
of time. Who knows what Gutenberg
envisioned when he created his printing press but he launched something
spectacular that reverberates today.
He
unleashed an explosion of information sharing, which expedited the advancement
of all things, from science and medicine to politics and philosophy. Think about it. Literacy rates were very low 550 years ago
but even amongst the literate, information flowed slowly, with bias and
limitation. Once books became
accessible to those who were not part of the wealthy or elite class, a
democracy of ideas was able to develop.
Information would beget more information. Debates and dialogues would ensue. From books, came great discoveries and
movements and a reformation in the way all aspects of life were carried out.
Man
writes glowingly of the lasting significance of the invention: “Gutenberg’s invention had created the
possibility of an intellectual genome, a basis of knowledge which could be
passed on from generation to generation, finding expression in individual books,
as the human genome is expressed in you and me, itself remaining untouched, a
river of knowledge into which every new generation could tap and to which it
would add, even after the last press ceases, and paper is no more, and all the
vast store of accumulated knowledge is gathered in hyberspace.”
However
one thing that didn’t change with the advent of mass printing was the habit of
censorship and banning. Man writes how
the Church, all powerful five-six centuries ago, spent considerable effort to
make sure certain books went unread, though such efforts also backfired and
created heroes of those it scorned:
“If
some works needed to be published, others certainly didn’t – a view that
inspired the response that has won the Church its most scathing condemnation
from non-Catholics: its attempt to control the press by banning those works of
which it disapproved.
“The
Church had always claimed the right to approve or disapprove of books, and
there had been occasional bannings, easy to impose by the Inquisition when
monks produced the books for other monks.
But the advent of printing raised the stakes, and the coming of Reformation
raised them higher still. In 1542, Pope
Paul III set up a local branch of the Inquisition, as opposed to its fearsome
Spanish counterpart, to counteract the Reformation, which it did by initiating
a reign of terror that Spanish inquisitors must have envied. One of its functions was to condemn heretical
books, a task paralleled in France by the Sorbonne, which published its own
list of banned books. The Council of Trent (1545-63), called to retrench after
the Protestant defection, established a centralized list of books that existed
thanks to that accursed invention, printing – a list that, thanks to that
accursed invention, printing, could be distributed across the world of the
faithful. Published first in 1559, the
list grew year by year, and so did its malign reputation.
“Actually,
it was not all malign, because the Index
Librorum Prohibitorum proclaimed what was new and interesting, and acted as
good advertising for Protestant publishers.
Banning never really worked: in
France the official bookseller Jean Andre printed both the Index and the work of the banned heretic poet Clement Marot. Being banned was a sort of
recommendation. Those on the Index in the early days included Peter
Abelard, Lefevre d’Etaples (the first translator of the Bible into French),
Boccaccio, Calvin, Dante, Erasmus, Rabelais and, of course, Luther. Eventually, there would be 4,000 books one
the Index by the time it was disbanded in 1966.”
What would Gutenberg think about the Internet?
What would Gutenberg think about the Internet?
To learn more on how to promote books, read my greatest blog posts from the past five years and 2,000 posts:
2016 Book Marketing & Book Publicity Toolkit
2015 Book Marketing & PR Toolkit
2014 Book Marketing & PR Toolkit
Book Marketing & Book PR Toolkit: 2013
Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2016.
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