Before the invention of the printing press, books were handwritten and produced by scribes, making them expensive and time-consuming to create. As a result, only wealthy individuals, scholars, religious institutions, and nobility had access to books. These groups had the resources to commission or purchase handwritten books, which were typically laboriously copied by trained scribes. This limited access to books meant that literacy rates were also low, as the majority of the population did not have the means to acquire or read books.
