Economic and Social Consequences
The press changed the cost structure of information. Copying had been linear: ten copies cost roughly ten times one. Printing front-loaded the expense into composition and then produced additional copies cheaply, which rewarded scale and made pamphlets, broadsheets, and cheap editions viable for the first time.
The consequences were fast and uneven. The Protestant Reformation is the standard example, with Martin Luther's tracts reaching audiences that no manuscript campaign could have touched. Scientific work benefited from something subtler: a printed edition could be cited by page, and diagrams could be reproduced identically for every reader, which made precise disagreement possible. Standardised vernacular spelling and the emergence of national literary languages followed in part from the choices of printers.
Not every effect was liberating. The same economics that spread new ideas spread inaccurate and inflammatory ones, and the period saw the development of licensing, censorship, and the index of prohibited books as states and churches tried to regain control of a channel they no longer owned.