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Digital Book Technologies Reshape All Production Strategies
By: Howard Fenton
There is a controversy brewing about the future of book and manual production. Some people say book and manual production are going away, while others believes that book production is evolving from a labor intensive, manual process to a fully automated, template-based digital process. Your ability to adopt new procedures and adapt to new automated equipment for digital book production could hold the key to creating and maintaining this competitive advantage, and may help the printed page remain competitive against the onslaught of electronic communication.
The argument that books and manual production are dead is based on statistics like dwindling book readership, the number of book publishers, the cost of long offset runs vs. shorter digital runs, and the book distribution model. The flip side argues that print production is simply morphing as digital printing and online technologies advance, and that those who take advantage of this evolution will be able to use it for any printing application capable of digital transference.
New book and manual production may hold the key for automating future production. The first question inevitably asked is, “What makes books and manuals good applications for these technologies?”. The answer is simple, books and manuals have very standard size formats and binding requirements which makes them easier to automate. The form factor of a book is well established in terms of the size, weight, page count, chapters and quality of the printed page.
Books and manuals are only one application, but an important one for in-plant printers, because in-plants print a lot of materials that fall within categories of book or manual production. According to In-Plant Graphics surveys, in-plants report high levels of production for reports (78%), manuals (77%), directories (63%) and annual reports (60%).
The Interquest Study, The Digital Book and Manual Printing Opportunity, grouped both books and manuals together, which makes sense because many of the size formats and equipment required for books are the same as those for manuals. They conclude that the compound annual page growth from manuals will increase 7%, and the page growth from books will increase 26% from 2004 to 2009. The study also found that today less than 5% of books and manuals are done in color, but will grow to 15% based on the cost savings associated with digital color printing.
Unlike books, which tend to be produced by conventional book printers and specialized digital printers, manuals are produced by a variety of providers, including book printers, commercial printers, quick printers, digital printers and in-plant operations. Some in-plants create more books and manuals than others. According to a survey recently conducted by In-Plant Graphics, 85% of U.S. insurance in-plants produce manuals. And higher educational institutions such as universities and colleges create a large number of manuals known as course packs.
The reprographics department at UC-Davis is producing educational materials, syllabi, readers and course binders. Course packs represent up to 60% of the print volume the in-plant produces on its four Kodak Digimaster 9110 black-and-white systems and Heidelberg conventional presses. But the technology to print color is switching from offset presses to digital presses.
Simon Fraser University has become a very successful in-plant and has been featured in a Xerox case history. SFU Document Solutions is the in-plant printing and publishing center for Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Running two shifts with 15 employees, the center provides a complete range of digital and offset printing services for faculty, staff and students. These include course-related materials, marketing collaterals, books, wide-format posters, and even silk-screening for T-shirts. Digital print volume is in excess of 2 million monochrome and 400,000 color pages per month.
While high volumes of course packs is not unusual --- combining color covers with monochrome “book blocks” to make the book more attractive course packs --- is. SFU uses a Xerox IGen3 to create the covers. Business professor Peter Tingling says the old packs were of low quality and didn’t look professional. Holding up a current example he says, “This looks like something students will want to pay for, use, and reference.”
Xerox points to this case history to demonstrate the growth in the course pack market. According to the 2005 Sigma Information report entitled College Publishing Market Forecast, the growth in course packs has been around 12%. “We’ve been able to bring our margins down lower than they’ve ever been. We can deliver the books to the students faster, and we’re selling the books for less.” While it is difficult to put an exact number on the percentage of books created by in-plants, the number is substantial.
According to Interquest the segments of the book market include professional books are 39% of the market while University Press make up 10%, and textbooks are 14%. Certainly a portion of these books are created by in-plants in either Fortune 500 companies or educational institutions.
New Technologies Create New Opportunities
There are a variety of new digital services that are available with Web-based products. They include online estimates, ordering, job submission, preflight, proofing, job tracking, and template-based design, which has been increasing in popularity because i.e. eliminates the need to recreate designs. It has been used successfully with Microsoft Office Suite applications such as Word and PowerPoint, and is often used for Web page creation.
Examples of more complicated templates would include promotional post cards, newsletters, and books and manuals. Many of the self-publishing book sites already use templates that allow customers to “flow” text into different size formats.
Today there are self publishing companies that use template-based strategies that allow anyone to create books. This same technology can be used by any commercial printer or in-plant organization.
Anyone with a computer can use a template-based publishing strategy with a company such as Lulu.com. Lulu.com allows the prospective author to choose a layout from a bunch of available templates on the site. They “flow” the text into the layout and print it! The book is available for purchase via Lulu.com or, as the case may be, through Amazon.com. Lulu software automatically takes care of fulfillment (the printing and mailing), so the book is never touched by a human hand.
Lulu uses Lightning Source to print many of their books and get them into Amazon and Ingram. Lightning Source provides the backbone for many self-publishers in the Print On Demand (POD) industry, though BookSurge may become more of an option now that Amazon owns them.
Companies such as Lightning Source, Xlibris, iUniverse and dozens of others use new computer equipment to print and bind single book copies that can be finished in minutes. Set-up fees typically range from $80 to $120. Many self publishers pay a 15% royalty on any books sold. Lightning does not pay royalties, but pays its publishers compensation from books sold – wholesale price of the book the publisher sets less print cost). Each book costs $4 to $7 to produce, but can be printed in runs of one or a dozen, compared to $3 to $5 for books produced by a traditional printer, in runs of hundreds.
Tip of the Iceberg
We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg of applications and use of template-based design. Today’s pioneers use this technology for a variety of printed projects and help their clients reduce costs and eliminate turnaround times.
They worked with PageFlex to develop a Web-to-print application that allowed their 1,023 users from 367 state agencies to access design templates, customize them and produce business cards, stationery, and brochures.
By using Web-based interactive editing technology the Washington State Department of Printing saved over $10,000 in just the first four months without reducing the actual printed product. The savings were associated with less proofing, shipping of proofs, and preflighting. And the Web-to-print application reduced turnaround times, for example, a 67% reduction for business cards over traditional ordering processes.
Predictions that books are dead are certainly not new. In fact, they are very old. One article says this: “If by books you are to be understood as referring to our innumerable collections of paper, printed, sewed and bound in a cover announcing the title of the work, I own to you frankly that I do not believe (and the progress of electricity and modern mechanism forbids me to believe) that Gutenberg's invention can do otherwise than sooner or later fall into desuetude as a means of current interpretation of our mental products…. Our grandchildren will no longer trust their works to this somewhat antiquated process, now become very easy to replace by—“
Believe it or not that was written for Scribner's magazine in 1894, in response to a new technologically "phonography." For Octave Uzanne, the reproduction of sound heralded the end of print mediation between author and audience. Hence, the saying, “The more things change the more they stay the same…”
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This article was originally published in NAPLs Business Review. Howie Fenton, senior consultant for NAPL (www.napl.org), provides an array of technology and workflow-related services, including inplant audits, workflow maximization, productivity enhancements, and quality control initiatives. For more information, email hfenton@napl.org.
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