A book printing client of mine is producing 300 copies of a long print book. At the moment it is 428 pages, 6” x 9”, perfect bound with a 12pt cover and 60# white offset text paper.
Initially my client had asked for 100# gloss coated text stock, so I had the book printer price this paper. However, when I saw that the book was text-heavy with no screens or solids and only ten halftones, I made a suggestion to my client.
I've always been somewhat wary of on-demand online book printing because I'm a commercial printing broker. I work with brick-and-mortar custom printing suppliers, and on-demand printers are my competition. (That's my disclosure for the sake of fairness.) That said, a client of mine came to me this week wanting to find an online vendor that could produce copies of her new 432-page perfect-bound print book as orders came in. But first, she wanted to have me find a brick-and-mortar printer to produce 300 or 500 initial copies of her 6” x 9” print book.
I read an interesting article today, sort of a State of the Union address but for digital printing rather than politics.
The article was entitled “10 Important Considerations Print Service Providers Should Think About in 2019.” Written by Barbara A. Pellow, this article was printed online on 02/15/19 on www.piworld.com under the heading “Digital Success.”
About a month ago I wrote a blog posting about production inkjet, but I just read an article today that makes the case even more powerfully for this rising technology. Production inkjet is an unstoppable force. It seems to be the wave of the future not only for digital printing but for printing in general.
I spent three hours in the Maryland Department of Transportation today (mostly waiting) to renew my driver's license. As a student of commercial printing with time on my hands, I took the opportunity to read the driver's license replacement brochure to see what I was getting.
Digital custom printing is stepping up into the big time. No longer are plastic photocopy machines on steroids the norm for new generation digital presses.
About a week ago a printing rep I work with told me his plant had a Fujifilm J Press. I didn't know what that was, but it intrigued me, so I did some research online. I have a lot of confidence in this particular sales rep's commitment to quality, and after reading some of the sales literature for the Fujifilm J Press, I understood the sales rep's confidence.