Before the printing press, books could be purchased only in expensive manuscript copies  The printing press produced books that were significantly less expensive than the manuscript editions  The public' s demand for printed books in the first years after the invention of the printing press was many times greater than demand had been for manuscript copies
This increase demonstrates that there was a dramatic jump in the number of people who learned how to read in the years after publishers first started producing books on the printing press
The first printed books published after the invention of the printing press would have been useless to illiterate people, since the books had virtually no illustrations.