With the advent of the secular university, students were no longer studying for the clergy. While some students were still from the aristocracy, others were the people who lived in the cities where the universities were located, who had time to attend lectures and take part in the intellectual life of the university. In many cases, the university consisted of lecturers who lived in the town. If a group of people wanted a class they would go hire a lecturer and pay him to give a series of lectures. The shift from a religious focus on the next world and the worship of God to a secular focus on the present world and an interest in the natural world.
Merchants have different interests from priests.
These new centers of learning created new demands for books. These students didn't have access to the books locked away in monastaries. So the university created a system of demand for books as well as a system for the use of books in ways not used with religious texts. This effect of the university on book production is what Febvre and Martin take as more revolutionary than the advent of the printing press. These folks provided paper and libraries of text books that had been carefully studied and compared to other books for accuracy.