The Economics of Academic Publishing

German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg, is generally credited with inventing the first modern printing press around 1440 – 1445. His was a project to make the Bible more generally available. It would surprise many that records show Chinese block printing pre-dating him by over 2000 years. Both the Chinese and Gutenberg methods set the stage for the mass production of readable materials, shifting part of the responsibility of the powerful pen (or quill) from author to publisher.