Inkjet's Age, a print supplement to Quick Printing, is a business and technology brand dedicated to corporate and senior management and focusing on issues surrounding inkjet printing technology in all its forms. Inkjet's Age covers the industry news,
Issue link: https://quickprinting.epubxp.com/i/425366
16 DECEMBER 2014 • INKJET'S AGE www.MyPRINTResource.com Bound for Glory B ack in 1996, a colleague of mine was conducting a seminar on on-demand book printing. A giveaway at the seminar was to be a book on the topic which was itself being printed on-demand. The organizers hit a snag when the book didn't arrive in time for the session, as it was, the printer said, "out of stock." Commented my colleague at the time: "Someone doesn't quite understand the concept of 'on-demand printing.'" Production Inkjet Opens a New Chapter for Books. By RICHARD ROMANO The traditional book printing and pub- lishing model of mass printing, warehous- ing, distribution and shipping, and returns, is chock full of waste and needless expense. Unless a book is by a best-selling author or becomes a best-seller, it is a highly inef- ficient process. The advent of digital book printing in the 1980s and its maturity in the 1990s promised—and in many cases delivered—greater efficiency and economy in book printing. At the same time, it has opened up book publishing to smaller and even self publishers who had been blocked from traditional publishing markets, or consigned to what was derogatorily referred to as "vanity publishing." And e-commerce solved one of the last remaining barriers to entry: distribution. Today's production inkjet presses are taking the promise of digital book print- ing even further, and are not only enabling short-run and on-demand book production but are also facilitating new book applica- tions such as versioning, customization, personalization, and manufacturing in full color. They are also, to some extent, chang- ing our perception of what a book is. "Production inkjet is being adopted, and becoming more of a standard, for book pro- duction and printing book components," said Stephen Sanker, Global Marketing Group Director, Strategic Marketing and Product Planning Production Inkjet Sys- tems, Fujifilm. "Different applications and new book development for specific interests, very targeted content, and for very short runs have been the easiest transition to production inkjet. In addition, we see that certain niche applications within the overall book market very easily transition to short- er-run, lower-cost, and less-waste methods of manufacturing because production inkjet provides all those benefits." Turning Pages It should be no surprise what the two biggest drivers of digital book printing are, be it toner- or inkjet-based: short run lengths and some degree of customization and personalization. However, "short run" is a term we use advisedly. "Short run is always relative," said Adi Chi- nai, managing director of Lowell, MA's King Printing, a pioneer of digital book printing. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, he said, "the longer runs were a few hundred thousand, and short run was 10 or 20 thousand." King Printing was founded in 1978 and started off as an offset shop, focusing on short- to medium-run book printing. King entered the digital book printing market even before there was a digital book print- ing market; in the late 1980s, the company was a beta site for what became the Xerox DocuTech. By the end of the decade, King was printing one-color books digitally as well as on a web-offset press. In 2008, King saw the winds of change blowing in an ink- jet direction and, by 2010, had transitioned to the HP T300 series. "We saw there was a migration from predominantly one-color books to full-color books in that customers were looking for different kinds of products that could drive their top and bottom lines," said Chinai. "So we used inkjet to drive that." At the same time, he added, "We've seen that customers are looking for faster time to market, higher quality output, and different substrates." Color and shorter runs are thus driving a lot of the transition to inkjet book printing. "Our average run is about 55 books," said Adam DeMaestri, president of BR Printers. "We have some large ones—2,000 copies, as well as some ones and twos." Manual Transmission BR Printers was founded in 1991 in San Jose, CA, and was a digital shop from the outset—at one time, it had 14 DocuTechs pumping out manuals for a broad range of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. However, like other companies that were printing those materials, BR watched as they quickly went electronic. "As time went on, that work went on CDs and online and we had to reimagine ourselves," said De- Maestri. BR Printers pursued higher educa- tion books and corporate training materials. BR opened a facility in Independence, KY, in 2007 and a third in Hightstown, NJ, in 2011, strategically covering most of the country. BR Printers expanded into inkjet in 2011 by installing a Ricoh Infoprint 5000 in its Kentucky facility, and last spring it installed an HP T230 Inkjet Web Press in its San Jose plant.