Why Gutenberg failed

[timelets]

Surprisingly, there are hundreds of versions of each letter. This suggests that Gutenberg did not make his types by the usual mass-production method using punches and matrices. Rather, they seem to have been handmade, one (or, at most, a few) at a time. Similar variability is observed in other Gutenberg printing, and in the work of several of his contemporaries. The inventor of the font is still unknown.

Gutenberg began this process by transmuting manuscript into moveable type, with magnificent results. Evolving selection pressures posed new problems for his successors. They needed to reverse the trend of the Gothic, moving towards lean, discrete and pan-European character sets: complex fonts are both costly to manufacture and difficult to typeset.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6841/full/411997a0.html

Gutenberg tried to imitate existing high quality manuscripts; therefore, his edition of the Bible was extremely expensive. By contrast, his successful but unknown(!) followers designed new fonts and focused on new types of text.