Digital Printing: How It Will Benefit Readers, Publishers and Booksellers

LOGOS 13(1)_CRC 9/4/02 12:04 PM Page 25

LOGOS Digital printing: How it will benefit readers, publishers and booksellers

Jeff Nock In the over 500 years since Gutenberg’s discovery, almost all books have been produced by letterpress or, later, offset or lithography printing. Publishers, bookstores, librarians and readers require books with print quality and fidelity of illustration that, until now, only offset printing could provide. In the last ten years, technology from companies such as Xerox, IBM and Océ has created digital printers able to As founder of the POD and print text as effectively as offset presses. Until e-textbook business of netLibrary recently, however, the production of color covers of Boulder, Colorado, Jeff Nock and halftones in the book block was below publisher and user standards. Also, like all new technology is a pioneer in the development of products, the digital printers have been so expensive digital printing. Before joining that, even if the quality of colors and halftones had netLibrary, he worked for not been an issue, unit costs were too high. thirteen years in publishing, Today the quality of digital printing has printing and book distribution, improved, so that publishers are accepting it for even the most complex books. While halftones including a spell as CEO of have not yet achieved 100% of the quality of offset, EPX/Denver. Nock has a they are close to it. Color in the book block is pos- Bachelors degree in Political sible, but not economically viable, and probably Science from the University of won’t be for three to five years. In a recent test, netLibrary converted a book from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Massachusetts University Press to a high-resolution Business Management and digital file. The file was then pulled securely via the Marketing. Internet by Bookmobile, a digital printer in St Paul, Email: [email protected] Minnesota. Metadata for the book was sent with the file. Without having any paper version of the book or its cover, Bookmobile was then able to print the book in a fashion remarkably similar to the original offset version. Bruce Wilcox, Director of the University of Massachusetts Press, said: “I think it looks very good. The illustrations may not be quite up to the standard of traditional offset printing, but certainly they are good enough for us to feel comfortable selling the book to our customers as a Print On Demand/short-run reprint.” Prices for digital printers have come down. Binding equipment is becoming less expensive. Cutter options are plentiful. Prices for all three

Jeff Nock

types of equipment will continue to drop, and the and is clearly going to run out of stock in days or volume of short-run, digital book printing will ipso weeks, digitally produced books can be printed in a facto increase. While today an offset print run of day or a week. Even if the book is selling so fast that 2,000 6” x 9”, 300-page paperback, with a color it appears that an offset run might be more eco- cover costs approximately US$2 a unit, printing nomical, digitally produced books can economically 200 of the same book digitally costs from fill the gap between the time a title goes out of US$3.02–$5.10 a unit. This means that for a little stock and the time when the offset run becomes over US$600 at the front or back end of a title’s available. life, the publisher can have 200 copies printed, One of the accepted rules of thumb in rather than pay US$4,000 for a 2,000 run. This publishing is that if a book sells more rapidly than does not mean that offset printing is going away. predicted, customers will wait a month for addi- For titles of which at least 1,000 copies will be sold, tional supply. The reality is that, although many offset remains more efficient. But for titles that will customers do wait for their books (or have to in not sell 1,000 copies and for those that have the case of students), there are many who do not. exhausted their initial offset run, and have an ongo- Print On Demand largely eliminates lost sales of ing demand of less than 1,000 copies, digital print- this kind. ing is a more economic model. Additional publisher benefits of digital * * * * * short-run printing include the reduction or elimi- nation of returns, which now range from 5% of What will happen next? Large book pub- sales for academic books up to 40% for trade. In lishers will adopt the technology via internal today’s challenging economic times, book distribu- investment, while mid-to-small publishers will tors are pushing inventory back to publishers at search out printer partners. Pearson Education, for alarming rates. Digital book printing reduces returns example, has developed its own in-house digital because it reduces inventory. Instead of printing for print facility. Traditional offset book printers such one or two years, publishers can now print inven- as Edwards Brothers of Ann Arbor, Michigan, RR tory predicted to sell in a fiscal quarter. After Donnelly & Sons of Allentown, Pennsylvania and reviewing the sales results from the first two months DeHart’s Printing Service of Santa Clara, Califor- of that quarter, publishers can go back to print with nia have invested in digital print capacity. Start-up a much more educated understanding of how many digital printers like Bookmobile of St Paul, Min- copies to print for the next quarter. nesota and Matrix Digital Technologies of Dallas, Another, often ignored, expense reduced Texas offer expertise and focus only on digital short- by digital printing is carrying costs. While publish- run printing. ers use different methods of measuring such costs, It is anticipated that publishers will even- the bottom line is a saving of fifty-five cents per tually use digital printers in the same way that they annum per book – equal to part or all of the differ- use offset printers. The art of creating consistent ence in offset and digital unit costs. Add in what is quality books remains the same, whatever the saved by the reduction in returns, and digital print- method of manufacture. Nonetheless, since the ing becomes a net saving. investment required to enter digital print is smaller Another saving is time. The normal turn- than that required to enter offset, a fusing of the around time for a book job on an offset press is roles of publishers and printers is to be expected. three to five weeks. (This can stretch to two to Already, Edwards Brothers has teamed up with three months if a hot title such as Harry Potter is Rowman & Littlefield and other publishers to oper- dominating press time.) The result is that more ate digital print facilities on site at publisher loca- books are printed than necessary because the pub- tions. This enables the publisher to manage its lisher knows that it will take a month or two to get inventory more efficiently and also to respond bet- more stock. With digital printing, turn times range ter to customer demand. At the same time, the from one day to three weeks. This time frame pro- publisher relies on the printer to provide the right vides publishers with flexibility. If the title takes off technology and printing skills.