You've just not paid enough attention (or skipped too many descriptive passages...). Printing presses/printers are mentioned several times in the books (a most notable example is when Loial mentions in reference to his book that there are many fine printers in Caemlyn. There's even inventors working on a better printing press at the Academy, and Mat has seen an exotic model with Seanchan settlers.).

Most likely the printing presses had evolved through the AOL to be ter'angreal, so after the breaking the technology's principles remained but the source of power did not and so the field had to go back to the basics.

Books are still expensive and valued because mass printing technology has not returned. It's all small manual editions, with typesetting of each page by hand, hung to dry etc. It's 1750-1800s, pre-industrial era printing , nowhere near a luxury as it was in the 16th century and most can buy a few books, but large libraries still are luxurious.

The principle of the printing press has survived the Breaking, and in Jordan's conception this has been the major factor preserving literacy since. This is not an ancient world in which writing and reading arose among religious or bureaucratic elites, almost vanish in many parts with the dark ages to return in the middle-ages and take forever (and Gutenberg...) before spreading beyond the elites, it's a world that enjoyed universal literacy and understands its value for everyone.



There are many written versions of the gleemen's tales - the people just enjoy these tales more when performed instead of reading them. Jordan has peppered the books with mentions of enough titles to paint the picture that literature is fairly similar to the real world's in the early modern era, if with no evolution from ancient forms, and with many dramatic losses of the literary heritage (Breaking, TW, WOHY etc.). There's everything from famous books of philosophy - commentary similar to the works of Montaigne to light courtly books about manners, love, to books on techniques and technologies, sciences. poetry etc. Fiction is still mostly oral, and the modern long forms have not (re) emerged. Theatre is barely making a comeback yet, novels are totally inexistent.

Farstrider's book is popular because it's obviously easy to read, and because it's all about exotic and mysterious lands and cultures, in an era where people still can't travel very far from their home, unless they're merchants or adventurers. SImilar travel accounts were extremely popular (in both senses) in early modern Europe just the same way.