Persons called copyists made a business of drawing or writing manuscript books. Most of the copyists were monks, who lived in monasteries, where often there was a room set apart for their work, called the writing room. Copying was slow work. To copy a book like the Bible took all of a year, and when this was done well it took two or three years.

Manuscript books were written on parchment or vellum. Parchment is made from the skin of sheep and goats; vellum from the skin of very young lambs and kids. The hair is cut from the skin. The skin is put in a mixture of water and lime, and kept there until the fat is removed. It is then taken out, and stretched and rubbed with pumice stone and lime, until thin and smooth.

The parchment and vellum sheets used in the manuscript books were, as a rule, ten inches wide and fifteen inches long. Broad margins were left on all sides. The first letter of the word beginning the first paragraph on a new page was omitted, as was here and there an important word.

When the copyist had finished his work, the separate sheets were turned over to the illuminator or illustrator. The illustrator filled in the margins with a border of flowers or of foliage, interwoven with birds, animals, angels, or saints. The borders were drawn in blue, green, purple, brown, silver, or gold. The important words omitted were written in color, while elaborate initial letters were painted in at the proper places. These decorations gave to the best manuscript books an elegance and beauty beyond anything to be seen in books at the present time.

The illumination or decoration completed, the separate sheets were passed to the book-binder. Books of large size were bound in boards which were sometimes two inches thick. If the binding was not to be ornamented, the board backs were covered with pigskin. If it was to be ornamented, the covering liked best was calf or goatskin. Upon the ornamentation of the bindings of the best books, there worked gilders, jewelers, engravers, and painters. Some of the most famous books were covered with enameled brass, others with ivory, and still others with gold and silver studded with precious stones.

Because of the work put upon them, manuscript books were sold at a high price, and only the rich could afford to buy them. A Bible, only fairly well written and bound, cost from a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars. At that time the wages of a laborer were fifteen cents a day, the price of a sheep twenty-five cents, of a cow two dollars, and of a horse five dollars.

Block books, on the other hand, were mostly plain, and made up of a few pictures or of illustrations, interspersed with printed explanations or religious precepts. The Evangelists, the first of the block books, had, for example, thirty pages. Fifteen of these were printing, while the other fifteen were full-page pictures. The Bible of the Poor, the most famous of the block books, consisted of forty pictures. These were seven and a half inches wide, and ten inches long.

The block books were so named, because they were printed from carved or engraved wooden blocks. In making a block book, a piece of oak, ash, cherry, or apple wood was cut two inches thick, and the width and length of the desired page. One side of the block, or the face, was smoothed and polished. On this was placed a drawing of the picture, and of the writing to be printed. The surrounding parts of the block were then cut away, so as to leave the picture and the letters of the writing raised, or in relief, making a sort of stamp. This carving required much skill, and the engraving of a single book consumed weeks and even months.

The engraving completed, the rest was easy. The carved block was covered with a coat of thin ink. A sheet of parchment or paper was placed upon it and pressed gently with the flat back of the inking brush. This transferred an impression of the carved picture and writing to the parchment or paper. The different printed sheets were then bound together.

Any number of books could be printed from the same set of blocks; for this reason block books were cheap. The ABC's  and the Lord's Prayer  cost two cents, the Catechism  twenty cents, Donatus or Boys' Latin Grammar  twelve and a half cents, and the Bible of the Poor  two dollars. But only small books could be multiplied in this way, for the carving of the blocks was slow work. To prepare the blocks to print the Bible would take at least thirty years, which of course was never done.