in literacy across Europe led to a dramatic increase in the demand for reading matter. Prices of reprints were low, so publications could be bought by poorer people, creating a mass-market readership. In German-speaking areas, most publications were academic papers, and most were scientific and technical publications, often autodidactic practical instruction manuals on topics such as dike construction. After copyright law became established (in 1710 in England, and in the 1840s in German-speaking areas) the low-price mass market vanished, and fewer, more expensive editions were published. Heinrich Heine, in a 1854 letter to his publisher, complains: "Due to the tremendously high prices you have established, I will hardly see a second edition of the book anytime soon. But you must set lower prices, dear Campe, for otherwise I really don't see why I was so lenient with my material interests." Early privileges and monopolies The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers. Before the invention of the printing press, a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes. An elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes did not exist, as scribes were scattered and worked on single manuscripts. Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information (see print culture). In 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time. In Europe printing was invented and widely established in the 15th and 16th centuries. While governments and church encouraged printing in many ways, which allowed the dissemination of Bibles and government information, works of dissent and criticism could also circulate rapidly. As a consequence, governments established controls over printers across Europe, requiring them to have official licences to trade and produce books. The licenses typically gave printers the exclusive right to print particular works for a fixed period of years, and enabled the printer to prevent others from printing the same work during that period. The licenses could only grant rights to print in the territory of the state that had granted them, but they did usually prohibit the import of foreign printing. The republic of Venice granted its first privilege for a particular book in 1486. It was a special case,