It also brought a sense of closure and finality to text, and it silenced the conversation between writer and manuscript reader or copier. Space was used more selfishly by the printed writer. Text was also clearer and enabled for more rapid, silent, internalized reading. With print, then, text became more visual than aural. The author was a self-contained, autonomous, elevated being, who controlled and dispensed with the technology of writing to an accentuated degree.
Print reinforces the sense of language as essentially textual.
The printed text, not the written text, is the text in its fullest, paradigmatic form. It is precisely in this sense that print, and not other forms of writing, creates authors. Other texts are written, printed texts are authored. But the final ingredient in creating authors is the law. Without legal recognition of the writer's privilege over the text, the structure would be broken.