Upon the invention of the printing press, information became much more democratized than it had previously been. Prior to the invention of the press, many types of information were only available to the rich and/or powerful because of the costs associated with origination and duplication. The printing press drove down the costs of manufacturing information exponentially. The result was that information was now much more accessible to the common man because it was no longer prohibitively expensive to document, acquire, or share.

In addition to making information more accessible, the invention of the printing press also had a democratizing effect on content. Because it became relatively easy and inexpensive to print information, the content of what was being printed was no longer limited to only what was deemed necessary to print by the ruling classes. Prior to the press, most mass printed documents were either religious or legal in nature. After the invention of the press, it became possible to print other things for the masses, such as literature and informational works. This newfound variety of information content fueled demand, and subsequently gave rise to variation in audience.

Given that the production process in the early days of the printing press was labor intensive, I imagine that the stages of authorship and collaboration were also labor intensive. I think there must have been several stages of drafting, reviewing, editing, and proofreading work before it was deemed as being fit for production. Even after being ready for production, I imagine there must have been a review process by the author(s) or editor(s) to ensure that the information being printed was accurate.

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