Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 32)

book manufacturers embrace Xerox Nuvera printers IMAGE QUALITY TRENDS report of the Book Industry Study Group, Inc., a leading industry trade association. But nextgeneration monochrome digital printers are boosting competitiveness in the segments for these three industry leaders. In particular, halftone image quality is now a close match to offset, just as text quality is in the previous generation of Odyssey Press has leveraged the digital printers. Paperexcellent quality of halftones produced handling improvements on its Xerox Nuvera 288 to expand its book manufacturing business for university mean digital book papresses and science, technology, and per choices can match medical publishers. offset even for lighter weights. And new, ﬁner toners eliminate the “puffy” quality that can result from stacking and binding xerographic pages printed on more conventional equipment. Books printed digitally look so similar to offset that workloads can be balanced across the technologies with no compromise in look or quality. NEW HIGHS IN Black-and-white digital printers deliver in key niches: professional and university press book markets By John Conley B Innovate Spring 08 ook manufacturer Edwards Brothers Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan was so impressed with the image quality on the latest generation of monochrome digital printers that it has traded out six of its of 10 cut-sheet monochrome printers for the new technology. At Mercury Print Productions in Rochester, New York, high-quality digital halftones have enabled entry into a new market: scientiﬁc, technical, and medical books. And at Odyssey Press Inc. in Gonic, New Hampshire, monochrome digital printers are helping to fuel double-digit revenue growth that far outpaces the industry. True, single-book manufacturing costs remain higher for digital printing than for offset, where long-run efﬁciencies bring down the average per-book cost. But net publisher revenue per copy is high enough in these segments—averaging $31.50 for a professional book and $17 for university press titles, according to the BISG—that digital book manufacturers and publishers can still proﬁt while improving inventory control with shorter print runs. Here’s a glimpse into how Mercury, Odyssey, and Edwards Brothers are capitalizing on these latest digital opportunities. Top Image Quality in “Blind” Test Digital printing’s portion of privately held Edwards Brothers’ $80 million business has grown by about 15 percent annually in recent years, now accounting for about 10 percent of revenues and 15 percent of titles. Those titles split evenly among four segments: health, science, and technology; other professional books; university press titles; and elementary and high school books. One of the 115-year old company’s key initiatives in recent years is to run print-on-demand book production facilities in its customers’ warehouses to better control distribution costs. Five such remote sites are currently operating. This April, one of those sites, at the University of Chicago Press, was outﬁtted with a next-generation Xerox Nuvera EA BY JOHN CONLEY The professional and university press book segments Edwards Brothers, Mercury Print, and Odyssey Press are projected to grow only slightly in the next few years, at compound annual growth rates of less than three percent, according to the 2007 32

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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