Gutenberg didn’t get rich through his Bible printing business. He didn’t make enough money with his printing business to pay his creditors and lost his business as a result.
For the printing press to be more economical than hand written books you actually have to sell many copies of your book. Books used to be written on parchment and that’s really expensive and would likely have been to expensive for making the printing press work.
Paper that’s much cheaper than parchment was likely a necessity for the printing press to have commercial success. According to Wikipedia the first paper mill in Germany was build in Mainz in 1320. By random Mainz happens to be the city in which Gutenberg was born.
Gutenberg burrowed money to employ 20 people over two years to print 180 copies of his bible. If you are used to books being very expensive the prospect of it being responable to print 180 copies of a single book might seem far fetched and as a result few people would start such a project.
The fact that he actually could borrow money to run a business with 20 people is notable because that means that certain economics have to be in place that weren’t at many times in history.
Update: I did some further research and it’s possible that the paper mill in Mainz didn’t exist and the first German paper mill was created in 1390 in Nürnberg. If that’s true that disturbs the narrative of the story a bit, but it doesn’t change the fact that paper availability was essential for Gutenberg.
Books used to be written on parchment and that’s really expensive
I bet people don’t quite realize HOW expensive it is. Even today, a single piece of parchment the size of a piece of notebook paper is going to run you about 50 dollars. Now make a book of them.
Gutenberg didn’t get rich through his Bible printing business. He didn’t make enough money with his printing business to pay his creditors and lost his business as a result.
For the printing press to be more economical than hand written books you actually have to sell many copies of your book. Books used to be written on parchment and that’s really expensive and would likely have been to expensive for making the printing press work.
Paper that’s much cheaper than parchment was likely a necessity for the printing press to have commercial success. According to Wikipedia the first paper mill in Germany was build in Mainz in 1320. By random Mainz happens to be the city in which Gutenberg was born.
Gutenberg burrowed money to employ 20 people over two years to print 180 copies of his bible. If you are used to books being very expensive the prospect of it being responable to print 180 copies of a single book might seem far fetched and as a result few people would start such a project.
The fact that he actually could borrow money to run a business with 20 people is notable because that means that certain economics have to be in place that weren’t at many times in history.
Update: I did some further research and it’s possible that the paper mill in Mainz didn’t exist and the first German paper mill was created in 1390 in Nürnberg. If that’s true that disturbs the narrative of the story a bit, but it doesn’t change the fact that paper availability was essential for Gutenberg.
I bet people don’t quite realize HOW expensive it is. Even today, a single piece of parchment the size of a piece of notebook paper is going to run you about 50 dollars. Now make a book of them.