Books

Books are a recent innovation. Before the modern era of the Empire, learned men wrote on scrolls (single sheets of parchment). Scrolls were arranged in great racks but easily became disorganized. In an effort to better organize the writings, bookbinding emerged in reaction to wizard grimoires, great tomes of magical knowledge. Histories were recorded in these tomes along with sacred scriptures. Temples of Sigmar dedicated themselves to the preservation of knowledge, and the duty of many was to copy the writings from scrolls and other books into new tomes for distribution to collectors. The books were works of art, illuminated with careful paintings along the borders, fanciful characters, and beautiful calligraphy. However, these books were costly and impractical. Heavy, bound in wood with leather covers and hand stitched, the process for producing books was quite slow.

Five years ago, Gunthur Johans of Middenheim, a devout man of Sigmar in a city of staunch worshippers of Ulric, designed and invented a machine he called the printing press. Essentially, he carved blocks of wood with raised characters. He arranged the blocks to form words, smeared them with ink, and pressed the tray onto sheets of paper by the printing press. Variations on Johans’ designs spread to other major cities, and now most printing presses are quite efficient, leaving the illumination processes of the years past to wizards and their books of arcane lore.

Though the production of illuminated books has dropped, they are still valuable as works of art. Many wizards and their kind see printed books as a travesty, the process lacking the intimacy of the mage and his craft. Most books are glued, further reducing the cost of creating them but making them far less durable than before.

Source
[[Category:B]]
 * Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2nd ED -- Old World Armoury
 * pg. 65