I don’t really know where I want to go with this essay. One thought right now is socio-economically, what if Europe were socialist instead of capitalist at the time? Would Gutenberg have had any incentive to be a leader of innovation. Howard notes, “Would retention of traditional manuscript forms make this volume more marketable? Possibly–and marketability had certainly been on Gutenberg’s mind” (31).

Or what if the Copyright Act of 1710, described on page 103 in Howard’s book, had not been passed? This piece of legislation shifted ownership from the printing press to the author. It shifted the market and incentives to write. Perhaps I will write this essay on copyright through the lens of incentive–what boundaries were in place to drive people to write and publish books and how would these motivations differed in varying cultural, economic, political, etc. contexts.