Because there was no printing press between 700 and 1750, scribes had to write down the hand-written texts. Because all of the copies were handwritten, it was impossible to tell which one was the original. That was the disadvantage of such copying. However, because they used their skills to create works of art, many scribes' notes are beautiful to read today. During this time, books were made from paper that was either handmade or manufactured. So scribes had to be good with a pen or pencil, since that is what was needed to make the writing legible on the page. Some scribes were also musicians so they could add music to their writings. A few scribes were even artists themselves so they could add pictures to their books. Books became more common than scrolls because they were easier to carry around. Also, people knew that a book could contain information that might not exist in a scroll. For example, a scroll may cover a topic that previous rulers didn't want people to know about. This would put them in danger of being punished by having its head cut off or being thrown into a boiling pot of water. Finally, books could be passed down through families while scrolls couldn't. This is why books are more common now than scrolls are: because books can be printed and copied, while scrolls have to be manually created one at a time.