Lead printing belongs to letterpress printing technology, that is, type is arranged on letterpress before printing. Printed books and calligraphy are clear, angular, with raised fonts and strong three-dimensional sense, and there will be no common problems such as broken version, incomplete fonts and blurred printing on the back. From the last years of Tongzhi to the early years of Guangxu, readers who used to read woodcut books were full of novelty and love for the emerging lead-printed books. In Shencheng, there is even a phenomenon of "competing for lead printing books, and every book is worth buying". The reason is that the printed books are "carefully proofread, clear and easy to read, that's all".
Compared with traditional woodcut printing, the most intuitive technical advantage of the emerging lead lithograph printing is the printing speed. Early lead printing bookstores (such as Mohai Bookstore) were driven by cattle, and could print "more than 40,000 sheets of paper" every day. Later, a firepower printer was introduced, which was faster. For example, a book integration bureau equipped with a variety of firepower printers can print 200 books every month. The newspaper once advertised that "a book 100 pages will be completed in about five days", while its novel "Talented Woman" was printed in lead, "completed in ten days, carefully proofread and neatly bound".
Because of the method of photographic transfer printing, the printing speed and simplicity of lithographs are better than those of lead printing. Wentong Bookstore once described the lithograph cloud: "It is simple and quick, just like a miracle. If the book is printed during the day, just like the strong wind on the water, the original book is not damaged at all. You can print as many as 10 thousand copies for three days, and woodcut is slow. Needless to say. " The technical convenience and speed advantage of lead printing have greatly expanded the publishing energy of publishing houses.
Of course, lead stone printing is a double-edged sword for the modern spread of popular novels in Ming and Qing dynasties, which has both positive and negative effects. Especially after the 16th year of Guangxu (1890), the relationship between supply and demand in the novel publishing market was unbalanced, the commercial competition intensified, the publishing environment deteriorated, and various drawbacks began to appear, which eventually led to the disorder and out-of-control state of popular novel reprinting. The author summarizes the common disadvantages into the following four aspects: