Off to the Future!
> Transforming Publishing
> Sustainability and the Book
> Digital Nirvana
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Two of
the recurrent themes of 2008 have been the ongoing transformation of
the publishing and book manufacturing industry and environmental
sustainability. Look to both of these to continue shaping parts of the
printing industry in 2009 and beyond. There's also a relationship
between sustainability and the transition to digital book production.
Producing books based on demand rather than speculation is a far
sounder environmental practice than the time-honored one of producing
thousands of volumes in the hopes that they will be sold, but which in
reality will never be purchased and wind up being recycled and going
out of print. This model is out of phase with both the financial
aspects of the 21st century book market and the necessity to create
sustainable, environmentally responsible business practices.
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Transforming Publishing
The evolution of book production shapes the future of publishing
"One thing that drives booksellers nuts is to have someone standing in a book shop requesting a specific book, and you cant get it because it is out of print, out of stock, in the reprinting process or needs to be shipped from another country and will take weeks. That amounts to a lost sale and a disappointed customer," said David Taylor, President of Lightning Source in a recent interview on WhatTheyThink.com.
Print-on-demand book manufacturing keeps titles alive and ensures they can be ordered and delivered quickly. Moreover, it holds out the promise that every book that has ever been published can be purchased. This is an amazingly exciting prospect for anyone selling books because the potential is enormous.
"I've been to more book warehouses than I care to remember," says Taylor. You often see piles of books with dust on them. The trend is to change the business model from a speculative one to selling first and then printing. The only way you can do that is with print-on-demand."
Publishers have been encumbered by a business model that required them to guess how many books they needed to print --and they nearly always guessed wrong. That error tied up capital tied in unsold books, and gave way to the often tough decision of whether or not or reprint. More often than not, a title wound up going out of print indefinitely, which had a further economic impact on the publisher because they couldn't sell books to which they had rights because demand was insufficient to justify the cost of reprinting several thousand copies. Even as the number of titles published actually expanded, this model caused a downward spiral in publishing revenues.
Print on demand turns that model on its head and enables books to be printed based on demand. To get the orders out --about 1.8 copies per order for the average title-- Lightning Source relies on some 20 Océ VarioStream 9210 continuous feed printers to produce books. Publishers and booksellers (both bricks-and-mortar and virtual) can now sell a book first and then print it, reducing risk and keeping customers satisfied --and coming back for more. As a result, many books are produced that would otherwise never see the light of day under the old model. This model, as it becomes increasingly business as usual for the publishers, is reshaping the future of the industry. At the same time, it makes great sense from an environmental perspective because it drastically reduces waste in the book supply chain.
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Sustainability and the Book
Reducing waste while growing profits
The many moving parts of the publishing supply chain result in as much as 40% waste, an incredible statistic given the marginal profits the average title earns for a publisher. The cost of paper and printing is merely the tip of the iceberg. Next comes the cost of transporting the books to distributors then to retailers, an important consideration in a time of unstable fuel costs. Unsold books get shipped back to distributors and publishers and there's always the cost of warehousing books in warehouses with 25-foot-high ceilings, stacked to the rafters with crates and boxes of unsold inventory. Then there's the final destruction of titles deemed obsolete, requiring still more energy as the books are pulped and recycled.
The print-on-demand model for books limits the resources required for the first printing, which can still be digital in many cases. The lower initial print runs reduces distribution costs and has a substantial cascading effect on waste and other transportation costs. Furthermore, as a publisher's inventory shifts from being physical to digital (atoms versus bits, as MIT's Nicholas Negroponte would say) warehousing and inventory management costs drop dramatically as do those for final destruction because fewer copies of any given title have been produced. With fewer resources used at every step of the supply chain, digital book production has an especially long-term effect on environmental sustainability.
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Océ helps the people who make our world. Companies everywhere use Océ technical documentation systems in manufacturing, architecture, engineering and construction. Each week, high-speed Océ printing systems produce millions of transaction documents such as bank statements and utility bills. And in offices around the world, people use Océ professional document systems to keep the wheels of business and government turning. Océ is also at work in publishing on demand, newspaper production and wide format color for spectacular display graphics. It all helps our professional customers go 'Beyond the Ordinary' in printing and document management.
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