Since the 1990s, the American Book Fair has always been a stage for emerging book industry technology exhibitions. This event in Chicago this year has been successfully concluded, but it leaves us with more thoughts. This article focuses on the discussion of two hot issues in the book industry, on-demand printing and e-books.
In the 1998 American Book Fair, printing on demand was a fashionable word. In the weeks before the 2000 book fair, it was precisely when Stephen King's new book, "Flying on the Bullet," was a huge success in the e-book publishing experiment. The e-book at the book fair was also quite hot. What about these two new technologies in the book fair this year? Some people may worry that the economic downturn will have a huge impact on the book industry. However, one can rest assured that this book fair is still the same as the previous one. Although the book industry has received some shocks, the entire industry has maintained a healthy development trend.
Printing on Demand: The New Favorite of the Industry At this book fair, the focus of on-demand printing vendors has shifted to the economic topics that publishers are concerned about. Some vendors even assist publishers in installing equipment at retail outlets to reduce Equipment transportation costs. Adobe company has always been the leader in the on-demand printing software market. This time, it also uses on-demand printing as the company's focus in the book fair. However, the company’s top executives claimed that the company did not try to shift its business focus from the printing industry.
Heavy technical equipment exits the booth This exhibition is significantly different from the previous ones in that the business did not exhibit their heavy equipment and it was difficult to find a laser printer in the entire exhibition hall. Big companies like Xerox and IBM are taking this year to put print samples in glass cases. According to relevant sources at the show, Xerox has made a strategic decision to focus on color printing business in the future.
There are two reasons why heavy machinery and equipment are withdrawn from the show: First, because of the overall economic downturn, it is obvious that this is the main reason. It is not that some people are concerned that the industry has lost interest in printing on demand; the second is the sale of many equipment. The business believes that publishers and booksellers have generally accepted the concept of on-demand printing. Today, these people are more concerned about how to make profits, rather than the updating of machinery and equipment. It is understood that many publishers now have widely accepted opinion on on-demand printing, and generally believe that it is time to put an end to the book publishing methods of the past and start accepting new workflows.
Publishers still have doubts about the return on investment. Many people in the industry are concerned about not being able to withdraw their investment funds within the period they can afford. In addition, publishers are generally concerned about how the price of books printed on demand falls below offset printing. The book is more competitive. Does the quality of book products produced in this on-demand printing format meet the standards set by the industry, which types of books are suitable for this type of publishing mode, and when and how it should be printed? So vendors no longer fully demonstrate cutting-edge technology equipment as they did before, but instead highlight their investment yield assessment programs. Some businesses even advertise on-demand printing as a supplement to offset printing.
Although the publishing industry has always expressed its concern about the quality of on-demand printed book products, it is no longer an embarrassing matter for distributors. Some dealers even exhibited samples of past and present on-demand printed books and compared them to offset printed books. Although the color of this on-demand printed book cover is a little bleak, some of the fine picture effects are not particularly satisfactory, but on the whole, it is still quite satisfactory, and even professionals have to admire it.
As for the price issue, one company exhibited a 161-page on-demand printed book at a cost of $4.50, which includes printing and manual labor. Compared with last year, the cost has dropped a lot.
Large and small companies, companies with different destiny and business on-demand printing business, due to their different scales, coupled with the economic downturn, the operating conditions are also different. Some small companies are in a difficult position in the fierce market competition, and some small companies are relatively small due to the required amount of funds, and may be easier to survive than those companies that rely on large-scale sales to make profits.
The problem faced by large companies is how to make customers believe that their equipment can attract a large number of business activities to achieve the expected cost per page. This is a big challenge for Xerox. The company's DocuTech equipment system has long occupied the majority of market share. Xerox's service and consumables costs are calculated based on large business lines. The company's DocuTech devices only have millions of monthly transactions to make a real profit.
In addition, on-demand printing equipment dealers can set up multiple production sites to deliver equipment directly to end-users, reducing high transportation costs. Some dealers even considered book binding and shipping issues to reduce transportation costs and shorten the production cycle. From the operation of dealers, we can see two points: First, printing on demand is really occupying an increasingly broad market space, because the scale of equipment manufacturers is constantly developing new markets; Second, based on the requirements to reduce transportation costs Equipment manufacturers are implementing programs that are close to distribution and printing customers. It is still unpredictable how far this kind of market operation of the merchant will reach.
Adobe's marketing strategy For Adolbi, the on-demand printing business may be less attractive than the direct-download e-book business. The company recently appeared to be less optimistic about the prospects of the on-demand printing market. Adolby’s current marketing strategy focuses on web publishing, which of course also includes the printing business. The relevant agencies predict that e-books will occupy 3.2% of digital transmission content in the next five years, while on-demand books will occupy 96.8% of the digital textbook market.
Of course, this prediction is not necessarily accurate, but the operating conditions of some companies can explain the problem. In the United States, a company that operates on-demand book and e-book businesses at the same time, its business status in March showed that the book business for each book and print format sold on the company’s website averaged US$ 87.5, while the electronic format averaged 60 US dollars. Minute. This makes it even harder to understand the marketing strategy of Adolbi's heavy e-books and lighter-demand printing of books.
According to an employee of Adolbi, the company is transferring the print-on-demand book business to their partners, probably the two companies iUniverse and Lightning Source, and the two companies OverDrive and Reciprocal may also be considering Listed. OverDrive and Random House, Harper Collins, McGraw-Hill and many other large publishers publish book cooperation services on demand. However, the company's e-book business volume is also considerable. At present, there is no obvious preference for on-demand publishing business. iUniverse announced at the show that their 500,000th on-demand printed books had gone offline. The company had an average of 100 copies of each book in the print-on-demand format. A customer service manager at the company revealed that they do not have a customer-oriented e-book business. Currently iUniverse has established partnerships with six on-demand print distributors.
Although Adobe’s PDF is now a common file format for on-demand printed book transfers, although the company has an inherent advantage in developing application tools for multi-platform on-demand book printing, there are currently no indications that the company is There are obvious moves in this regard. An Internet printing product manager of the company pointed out that Adolbi is very conservative in on-demand printing, but the company still has a majority of the market share in the PDF content format and the PS RIP format. The manager also revealed that in the next 6-8 months, the company should have major initiatives.
Security Solutions Adolbi developed specialized network job control tools for T/R Systems, Océ and other companies, namely Maestro and Prisma. However, they do not solve the security problems of PDF books transmitted from the publisher's website to remote printing devices. Part of the problem is that as distribution and printing become more dispersed, remote printers know less about what they need to know and may find it difficult to operate as expected.
The on-demand printed book network transmission is not as simple as an e-book. The PDF data of the e-book is very different from the PDF data of the on-demand printed book. The on-demand printing book also includes high-resolution pictures and bitmaps, and different pictures. Tailoring and paging, cover files for paperback and hardcover books, etc. Adolbi’s content server (Adobe Content Server) provides full technical support for on-demand printing of books, but there is still a big gap compared to the company’s e-book technology. In fact, such content servers started. It is not designed for on-demand printing but for e-book business. However, such servers can, after all, be used for the transmission of print-on-demand books from publishers to the network of printing equipment, because they were originally designed to pay more attention to the safety and security of data transmission. Adolbi company has a special "Adobe eBook Reader" for e-book network transmission. The user's technicians can monitor the entire transmission process. The security performance of this equipment is more complete.