The copies are kept in Belgrade (two), Kyiv, Krka Monastery, Lviv, Novi Sad, Patriarchate of Peć, Prague, Saint Petersburg, and Zagreb.

The book is printed in uncial Cyrillic with elements of cursive, in the orthography of the Resava literary school.

In 1493, Đurađ Crnojević, the ruler of the Principality of Zeta (in present-day Montenegro), sent hieromonk Makarije to Venice to buy a press and learn how to print books.

[2][3] In the second half of 1518, brothers Teodor and Đurađ Ljubavić arrived in Venice to buy a press and learn the art of printing.

[4] After Đurađ Ljubavić died in Venice on 2 March 1519, it is unclear whether his brother transported the press to Goražde before or after finishing the work on the hieratikon.

[5][13] The Goražde Psalter, ten copies of which are known to exist today,[14] is counted among the better accomplishments of early Serb printers.

[17][18] The psalter is written in Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension, the medieval literary language of the Serbs.

The Resava orthography became dominant in Serbian literature, but it never fully ousted the rules of the older Raška literary school.

[21] The Goražde Psalter begins with an introduction occupying the first ten leaves, which is followed by the Psalms (folios 11r–137r), the Canticles (137v–149v), Horologion (150r–189r), Menologion (189v–265v), the Rules of Fasting (266r–303r), a text about the Catholics ("On Franks and Other Such Anathemas", 303r–304r), the Paraklesis and Akathist to the Theotokos (305r–326r), the Paraklesis to Saint Nicholas (326v–334v), the Service on Holy Saturday (334v–350v), three additional texts (350v–352v), and the colophon (352v).

In the first addition, Teodor Ljubavić, the editor of the book, reports that he found the texts on the Great Fast and on the Franks in the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos.

Сїѥ лѣто паде Соултань соулеимень на рѣкоу Савоу сь множьством измаилтень и прѣхождахоу рѣкоу Савоу ꙗкоже по соухоу... и ѡпстоупише ѿвьсоудоу словоущи бельградь ї иннїе ѡкрьсниѥ гради.

[4] The faces of the cast metal types used for its printing were designed in the manner of uncial Cyrillic of medieval Serbian manuscripts, with certain elements of cursive.

In the other leaves, the ten-line block is 70 millimetres high, with mostly 22 lines per page, and word spacing is tighter than in the first part of the book.

The rest of the book contains only the initials with slender strokes, and they are rarer, smaller, and simpler than in the Psalms; they are equally printed in black and red.

[24] Božidar Petranović found a copy of the Goražde Psalter in the Krka Monastery in Dalmatia, and he described it in 1836 in the first volume of the journal Србско-далматински магазинъ (Serbo-Dalmatian Magazine), thus introducing the book to scholars.

[29] Pavel Jozef Šafárik mentioned the psalter for the first time in 1842 in an article,[30] which was later translated from Czech into German and Russian.

[29] The psalter and the other books of the Goražde printing house were also discussed by Ilarion Ruvarac, Vatroslav Jagić, Ljubomir Stojanović, and, after World War II, by Đorđe Sp.

The eighth and the ninth copies were destroyed along with the National Library of Serbia by the German bombing of Belgrade in April 1941.

[33] The thirteenth copy was part of the collection of bibliophile Georgije Mihajlović from the town of Inđija, who gave it to the Library of Matica Srpska in 1962.