“From the first, printing emerged as an industry regulated by 
the same laws as any other, and the book as a product 
concocted by men who had their living to make—even when, as 
with the Aldus family or the Eastiennes, they were at the same 
time humanists and scholars.”

     These authors, then, proceed to go into the question of 
the considerable capital needed for printing and publishing, the 
very high incidence of commercial failure, and the drive for sales 
and markets. Even to the sixteenth century eye there was a 
notable trend of book selection and circulation that boded 
“l’apparition d’une civilisation de masse et de standardisation.” 
A new kind of consumer world was organized gradually. Out of 
the entire production of books till 1500, amounting to fifteen 
to twenty million copies of 30,000 to 35,000 separate 
publications, by far the greatest proportion, seventy-seven per