THE STATUS OF PRINT

• The automation of printing is nearly complete.
• Nobody wants more print.
• Printing belongs to the Industrial Age.
• Interactive media belong to the Information Age.
• The costs of conventional publishing are rising.
• The expectations of readers are also rising.
• There are three kinds of publishers and three kinds of publications.

The automation of printing is nearly complete.

New computing, communications and imaging technologies have automated most of the print production business. Word processing, desktop publishing, computer graphics, electronic photography and digital imaging have eliminated most prepress jobs. Laser-to-plate systems, digital printing presses, color laser printers and in-line finishing equipment are pushing automation into the pressroom and bindery. Publishers are living most of the production manager's dream of workflow "from brain to mouse to press," and it's easier than ever before to make more print.

Nobody wants more print.

Except for the people who sell paper and ink, nobody in the developed world wants more print, more "information" dumped on our desks every morning that we never get a chance to read, more magazines piling up on the floor awaiting recycling day, more catalogs that go directly from the mail box to the trash.

What the we need--what publishers are striving to create--is better print, more effective publication, and these days that might mean ink-on-paper, toner-on-paper or pixels-on-screen. Instead of a single press run of a million impressions, buyers are asking for ten press runs of a hundred thousand each and many are shooting for a hundred thousand press runs of ten impressions each.

Printing belongs to the Industrial Age.

Conventional printing (along with broadcast television) typifies the batch manufacturing approach of the Industrial Revolution: a single standardized product produced in vast quantities with terrific economies of scale and constantly improving process efficiencies.

Heaven for a printer is a batch processing nirvana in which every cylinder of every press is churning out perfect pages 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a single customer, a house account, who pays--every Friday--in cash. New technologies like desktop publishing, image processing and digital prepress have dramatically improved the efficiency of batch printing and at the same time made smaller batches more affordable.

Interactive media belongs to the Information Age.

Advances in computing, communications and imaging technologies improve the targeting of publications. On the creative side, electronic design and production tools make more customized, more timely and more economical page forms. On the distribution side, new media formats make the delivery of the publication better, faster and cheaper. Smart publishers in every industry segment are crafting a new generation of interactive publications that tune themselves uniquely to the needs of the "Audience of One." (Some printers are expanding into new media services, some of which make money.)

The costs of conventional paper-based publishing are rising.

Print is getting more expensive and losing its competitive edge to alternative media.

• Paper costs are rising rapidly and may never return to their historical lows since demand from the developing world is increasing and pressure from environmental groups opposed to paper mills is strong worldwide.
• Distribution costs (including postage) are based on constantly increasing labor and energy costs and will never get any cheaper.
• Out-of-date information costs, which don't show up on many accountants' spreadsheets, are a serious and growing expense for publishers in all segments.

The expectations of readers are also rising.

Now that nearly every literate person has used a computer, a revolution of rising expectations is sweeping the publishing markets. These new expectations cover both the editorial and the commercial aspects of publication.

• Readers expect faster turnaround to compete with electronic media.
• They prefer the searchability of interactive products to the dead weight of paper.
• They like the superior illustration opportunities of multimedia.
• They expect to pay-per-view for the information they need rather than subscribe to pages they may never use.

There are three kinds of publishers and three kinds of publications.

Defined by their environments and their audiences, publishing operations fall into three broad classes:

• Commercial publishers print for profit and produce newspapers, magazines, books and other products whic generally carry a price tag.
• Corporate publishers create pages for advertising, marketing, corporate communications, technical documentation and collateral material that they usually give away for free.
• Government publishers in federal, state and local divisions generate mountains of legislative, regulatory and judicial documents that are paid for by our tax money.

Defined by their intended use, most publications do predominantly one of three things, although most pages contain all three in varying combinations:

• Inform readers with breaking news, analysis, reference data, specifications, prices and other facts.
• Entertain audiences with stories, novels, poems, jokes, gossip and other forms of narrative.
• Persuade prospects with advertising spiels, marketing communications, sales notices and promotional material.

Copyright 1996 by the Graphics Research Laboratory, Inc. All rights reserved.