When Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg invented the movable type in 1439, he and his fellow printers discovered that the great advantage of simplifying the printing process was to make serious money by selling printed books for nearly the same price as hand-written manuscripts. By 1500, the price of books had dropped by 4/5ths.

But soon after his invention took off, printed books became the "organs of the passions of mankind". 

Printing/publishing, formerly painstakingly done by cumbersome woodblocks or by monks copying manuscripts by candlelight, now was becoming mass market and was somewhat used for political and religious "protests", especially against the Catholic Church from the Protestant reformers. One of the main beef from the reformers was that Latin was the exclusive province of priests and learned scholars. The masses never got a foot in "education" since schooling was relatively reserved for the gentry and the clergy (often second sons and daughters from the gentry). The reformers wanted the bible to be provided in the local languages to also help ordinary people learn reading and writing.

Of course the Catholics did not want the vulgar common languages being used to swindle souls away from their little racket that bathed in the mystery of arcane Latin. The same happened with the Muslims who do not want the Qu'ran written in other languages than Arabic. The carefully concocted arcane and sacredness tend to loose their cachet when fully understood as the con they are.

The printing of books was slowly "democratising" the understanding of the social order and awakening "spirits". That soon got squashed...

William Caxton was a successful mercer who, like a duck to water, took to "The Mystery" (the craft of printing alla Gutemberg) by translating, printing and publishing books. The first book "published" in the English language was Caxton's "The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy" in 1474. The first ever book printed in England was Caxton's "The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers" in 1477.  

Soon, most of the newly published books, were works with popular appeal. They provided the masses with new view points, political and religious, as well as "entertainment" such as "romance" stories and hunting manuals.

A major problem for the Catholic Church was Tyndale's translation of the New testament into English. Protestants smuggled the book from Europe into England. When these books were found by the "authorities", they were burnt. 

One bishop decided to stop this noxious trade and sent an emissary to buy all the copies he could find in Antwerp. Of course, the "bishop buying all the books" provided instant cash for Tyndale to print second editions with extra plated illustrations, plus the Book of Exodus, on top of a very decent living. The bishop's ploy thus failed miserably.

The freedom to publish soon became a major problem for the Kingdom and the Church.

In 1534, the English Kingdom created a strong censorship regime by making sure all books published were "licensed" by a new guild, the Stationers' Company. This censorship lasted more than two hundred years to the resentment of authors and publishers though they still "published" clandestinely. Most authors were never paid, but the pamphleteers were still pushing their luck against the authorities who were cracking down harder and harder on subversive material and "unlicenced" book which were mostly the books the publishers wanted to publish. 

Here comes a witty Thomas Nash who, apart from sending the Elizabethan Queendom shitless, was also the "first" English literary critic, specially of bad writing and boring poetry. He was an inventor of word:

There is a Doctor and his fart that have kept a foule stinking stirre in Paules Churchyard; I crie him mercy, I slaundered him, he is scare a Doctor till he hath done his Acts: this dodipoule, this didopper, this professed braggart hath raid vpon me, without wit or art, in certaine foure penniworth of Letters and three farthingworth of Sonnets;...

The proliferation of seditious authors was soon counteracted by kings and their ministerial minions publishing their own books, swamping the market. 

Some books were published for the ideal of mankind, but many were to make serious cash. The new industry of literary critic started by Nash, flourished. Authors savaged authors. Private libraries became larger and larger and the nobility had to employ librarians to classify these books that no-one ever read, except the critics thereof. Some noblemen employed their librarians on their good looks and fuckability, not unlike some maids. Critics had a field day...

King James the First was responsible for the first "authorised version of the bible" in the common lingo of English, published in 1611, about 150 years after Tyndale's translations.... 

As well, scientific book were published "for The Improving of Natural Knowledge" (1667).

The printing press was improved with metal plates which allowed for longer lasting engravings and or etchings (1500). 

The paper cash was invented in the 7th century by the Chinese. But the first banknote issued by the bank of England (founded 1694) was printed in 1695 mainly to fund WAR.

And then the business of journals, news and printed "entertainment" was developed not to stir passions but to make money and regulate our intake of opiate. Religion is still in bed with governments. News is pre-muched, pre-digested, pre-packaged and there is little room for dissent on the margins. Plain wrongness by some pollies and advisors are SOLD to us as "different opinions". Opinions are often at the source of superstitions. Media barons became rich, especially when providing wrongness in an easy palatable format. 

The truth is hard yakka. it needs a lot of caveats and explanation, while any falsities can be printed without the need for back-up documentation. Anyone can spruik anything... Garbage outsells the truth one hundred to one.

All this to say that now in the epoch of electronic "communications", we're still marooned in deceit and brain-massaged by entertainment — and plunged in latent censorship and managed shifts of moods. Our distractions are many. Our comfort in submission to the insipid and the predictable is boundless. We don't read the small print of our social contract. 

We gawk at pictures of newly born princesses, without realising our ideal of a more equal society are once more destroyed by the kingdom.  The pundits now question why the "polls were so wrong" in the recent elections in England, where the conservatives won handsomely... Though the polls are made with substantial margins of errors, the main influence on the result was in my book the birth of Princess Charlotte... Isn't she so cute... two points shifted on the news towards the CONservatives... The importance of the royal coitus cannot be underestimated in a country like England and by default Australia presently led by a rabid royalist iddiott.

And these con artists who swindle our spirits with snake oil in books are smiling with hypocritical compassion as we become cocooned into complete annihilation of free thoughts.

The rise of narcissistic individualism is a relative mana for governments. While we look at our navel in the shape of an iPhone, we don't pay attention to the truancy of our leaders.

These days we get so much printed matter and "packaging" in our homes though that there is enough to fill a packed cubic metre every three months. Lucky we recycle but the cycle continues with more crap coming our way. Of course "paper" was invented by the Chinese in about 100 BC. Soon it was used as packaging to wrap tea as well as writing stuff on it. The oldest "books" known — as opposed to parchment and scrolls were instruction manuals. They were found in Egyptians tombs as 4000 year old instruction booklets on how to deal with the dangers of afterlife. Apparently these books were never used. 

Gus Leonisky

Your Local Publishing expert.