The power of one: Print 21 magazine article

From forgotten textbooks to first-time novels by aspiring writers, there has never been an easier time for people to produce books. Mitchell Jordan discovers that print-on-demand is opening up a whole new chapter of promise for printers.

John Emerson was anxious at the thought of establishing a publishing company. The academic from the University of Adelaide was well aware that textbooks would never be best-sellers and, in this challenging economic environment, the likelihood of moving such niche titles off the shelves seemed even more difficult.

The University of Adelaide has been publishing books under various imprints since the 1920s, during which time there had been at least 12 unsuccessful attempts to secure funding for its own press. There is no doubt that printing books is an expensive venture, but after conversations with fellow university presses – most notably Australian National University in Canberra – Emerson (pictured) learnt about a quicker, cheaper, and more effective way of publishing and printing books: print-on-demand.

It isn’t a new phenomenon; for years, one-time desperate authors unable to break through the slush pile have been able to log onto Lulu.com or visit the printer and see their work materialise into a physical object almost instantly. But print-on-demand carries with it a number of negative connotations: it can look cheap and nasty, and it attracts ‘vanity’ publishers – all perceptions of which Emerson was well aware.

“People have been doing print-on-demand for a while, and some of the books looked awful,” Emerson admits. “The design was poor, and vanity publishers gave it a bad name. I had a prejudice against it.”

All of this changed, however, when Emerson went to visit a business not too far away from the University of Adelaide that would meet all of the university’s needs and turn the dream of establishing its own press into a very do-able reality.

Book factory turns heads … and pages
In September last year, Griffin Digital, a subsidiary of Griffin Press, opened what it claims to be Australia’s first “book factory” in Adelaide.

The result of five years of research and discussion with Fuji Xerox, Griffin Digital focuses on short-run digital production and in helping all kinds of publishers get new titles and reprints to market quickly.

According to Ben Jolly, (picured) general manager, Griffin Digital is aimed at pre-marketing and book titles that have reached the end of their publishing cycle. With a Nuvera 288 production printer that is capable of producing 200 books per hour, Jolly believes the increase in both print-on-demand and short-run books will grow now that Griffin Digital is able to offer the product at a more affordable price.

“In terms of actually printing books we are seeing the demand grow at quite a significant rate right now,” Jolly says. “Price points are starting to work for some of our customers.”

The University of Adelaide Press was one customer swayed into taking part.

“When I saw what Griffin Digital had done I was really impressed,” Emerson says. “They have made it possible to print books of equal [to offset] quality. Their technology has really lifted the ball game.”

Emerson admits that Griffin Digital played a large part in the establishment of the University of Adelaide Press in December last year.

“Previous attempts to establish a press were based on the traditional model of printing, and this of course put significant capital at risk,” he recounts. “Courtesy of digital, the main costs now of publishing a book are concentrated in getting it ready to print, not in actually printing it.”

Thanks to these advances in print-on-demand technology, the University of Adelaide Press now publishes the university’s intellectual and scholarly output as book-length works in two editions: an online e-book for free download, and a trade quality paperback edition printed by Griffin Digital when customers require it.

“This method is a total reversal of the traditional publishing model,” Emerson explains. “We sell the book first, then print it.”

It’s a process couldn’t be easier according to Emerson: “As soon as someone orders a book, I email the PDF to Griffin Digital and one day later it’s printed,” he says.

“This is amazing because the turnaround time for traditional printing is much longer. For universities, print-on-demand makes more academic work available which may have previously missed out on getting published due to commercial concerns.”

Emerson hopes that print-on-demand might revive the current state of university publishing, which he laments has been in decline. Overseas, for instance, the University of Michigan installed a digital Espresso Book Machine (EBM) from On Demand Books of New York in September last year.
“As a library, we’re stepping beyond the limits of physical space,” said Paul Courant, dean of libraries at University of Michigan. “Now, we can produce affordable printed copies of rare and hard-to-find books. It’s a great step toward the democratisation of information, getting information to readers when and where they need it.”

No taste for Espresso
In Australia, bookstore Angus and Robertson made an attempt at bringing print-on-demand into the mainstream in September last year when it released the country’s first EBM at its Bourke Street store in Melbourne.

With a catalogue including hundreds of book titles – mainly fiction – 50 EBMs were expected to be rolled out across Australia and New Zealand this year. When contacted by Print 21, Angus & Robertson management were unable to comment on statistics for the EBM or its future locally, though staff from the Bourke Street store did confirm that no more EBMs had been installed in local Angus & Robertson stores at the time of this article going to press. All of which raises questions – almost one year later – as to just how successful the machine has proven to be.

Something that cannot be denied is the poor quality of books produced by the EBM. Readers may recall that when this writer went to test the machine for himself last year (Print21, December 2008), he walked away carrying a book with a chipped spine, off-centre title and text so faint that it was sometimes almost unreadable.

The trick to making print-on-demand a success, it seems, is access to the right technology. Indeed, Jolly admits that Griffin Digital’s book factory would not have been possible without the launch of Fuji Xerox’s Nuvera 288.

“Prior to opening the book factory, we had older technology and it was slower, had higher labour costs and we couldn’t get the price points to work for our customers,” he says.

New to Australia
Livio Barbagallo, managing director of Müller Martini, agrees that technology is the key and says that, to date, print-on-demand has not been a thriving market for Australia. He notes that Müller Martini’s SigmaLine automated binding line for digital book production, which has proven to be very popular for publishing in the United States and United Kingdom, is not currently installed in Australia.

“The actual size of the market is rather small and most books, brochures and magazines are still mass-produced,” he says. “The growth in the print-on-demand market is dependent on the technology that is available and it will start to grow faster as soon as the solutions become more user-friendly, have better print quality and are more economically justifiable.”

Again, it is difficult to determine just how large the market for print-on-demand currently is in Australia. Perhaps due to the negative connotations associated with it, many publishers do not want to admit to printing their books this way, though it is known that at least one of Australia’s mainstream publishing companies has a heavy interest and involvement in print-on-demand for its books.

Jolly agrees that while there is currently not a lot of print-on-demand happening in Australia, he feels that this will soon change.

“I think print-on-demand will grow significantly in the next 12-18 months because of the capability of digital print factories that can offer greater price points than in the past,” he says. “As a manufacturing concept, it’s still new for Australia. It’s a big market in the United States and United Kingdom where they have larger populations, so naturally their demand is going to be higher than in Australia.”

Judge a book by its cover
At SOS Print & Media in Sydney, director and Galley Club president, Michael Schulz, is surrounded by a number of different books. Some have been printed offset, while others are one-off copies done digitally by either SOS Print & Media’s Océ or Kodak machines. To the untrained eye, it is very difficult to know which book has been printed digitally and which has been done offset. As Schulz states, the average reader and book buyer would not know, and would not care.

Pictured: Brett Patterson (left), digital print manager at SOS Print & Media, with Michael Schulz (right).

“For those of us in printing, it is remarkable than we can do this because these books do not look low quality at all,” he says. “The difference in quality between a book printed print-on-demand compared to offset is indistinguishable.”

SOS Print & Media has always been equipped with both a digital and offset arm and has been printing books digitally for both large and small-scale publishers – including self-publishers – for seven years. Schulz is highly optimistic of print-on-demand’s future in Australia; in fact he believes that in comparison to countries such as Germany, it has even greater potential for growth.

“The market will keep growing because it is a product that makes sense,” he says. “Print-on-demand reduces shipping, storage and transport because you can ship straight from production to the bookshop or end-user.”

Admittedly, print-on-demand does not suit all books, and it is unlikely that Harry Potter or Twilight will ever become so rare that publishers and book stores only require one copy, but then again such best-sellers don’t come along every day.

Going ultra-short
Cliff Brigstocke, CEO of Opus Print Group (of which book printer, Ligare, is a part) says the company has definitely identified the potential of quick turnaround books with reduced  print runs, something which fits well with digital printing. As a result, Ligare has invested significantly in digital printing and, in November last year, commissioned a dedicated digital print facility which includes the latest short-run Océ technology combined with near-line short-run perfect binding.

Brigstocke says the run lengths for their strategic accounts are now “ultra short-run” and extremely rapid in terms of turnaround. He sees digital technology as beneficial for books that are required urgently, but not for books that are meant to make a lasting impression. (Interestingly though, Coloured Women, which won the non-standard, mono/duo/four-colour digitally printed prize at this year’s Galley Club Awards is a coffee table book).

“Coffee-table books are not the kind of thing that print-on-demand is built for, so quality of that kind is irrelevant,” Brigstocke says. “The quality of print-on-demand, as we have it, is great for what it needs to be: the delivering of text-based information in print; and it keeps getting better.”

And it has found a fan with John Emerson and his fellow academics who were once as sceptical of the technology as he was. He recalls that staff are “astounded” when he shows them the texts being published by the university press. So long as this continues then print-on-demand has claimed at least one victory in Australia.

“The look is exactly the same and you don’t even need to tell people that it was done print-on-demand,” Emerson says. “If the book looks the same, then that’s what is important.”