Printing on demand: a new market niche

Communication World, Sept, 1995 by Cliff McGoon

In the business world as recently as 10 years ago, we relied on print almost exclusively for the organization's formal communication. It was slow, involved, and mostly one-way, and as the surveys always seemed to tell us, our one-size-fits-all approach wasn't very effective.

We printed a huge quantity of publications, then searched for expanded audiences to lower our cost-per-thousand. What didn't get used was stuck in a basement or warehouse.

Despite these considerable limitations, print's death has been greatly exaggerated. The fact is print still does -- and probably always will do -- some things better than electronically distributed information.

For example:

* Print generally offers more attractive and readable design.

* It is easier for the reader to refer to any time, any place (like on the bus).

* The message has greater sense of permanence.

* Print can serve as a roadmap to what too often is online confusion (the way a TV guide does with television).

* A sense of family can be created by the physical presence of a magazine, especially when spanning distances and cultures.

Today the limitations of print -- long cycle times, high costs, little flexibility -- are being changed through a phenomenon called print on demand (POD). Like almost everything that is pushed along by technological improvement, POD is changing rapidly.

Print On Demand-What Is It?

Print on demand simply means printing publications when and where the need exists. In its simplest form, it's the ink jet or laser printer connected to your computer. With more elaborate systems, you can use the electronics and Page Description Language (PDL) in your computer to transfer your publication's specifications down the hall or anywhere in the world to print out for a distant local audience. By printing for local audiences, rather than one huge amorphous one, you wind up, in essence, printing many short runs rather than one large one. The changes in technology are making short runs more economical and of better quality than has been possible before. In the bargain, you save the time and expense of postage. No more lengthy and expensive pre-print preparation for a large offset printing press.

Technology is segmenting the printing market-creating a bunch of new niches -- and communicators can use those niches to make their messages -- more effective and their budgets go further. The biggest breakthrough was linking these various types of imaging devices-ink jet and laser printers, digital duplicators, copiers-through page description language, to desktop publishing systems. With the click of a mouse, instructions for paper stock, quantity and other options are transmitted to the imaging system to be queued up and printed.

The greatest change began at the low end of the market with black-and-white output devices imaging relatively simple newsletters and booklets. But creative editors and artists are working to bring to the print-on-demand arena, color, varied-size paper stocks and other features usually available only through longer-run offset printing.

Mimeograph machines go high tech

Digital duplicators represent an outgrowth of the old mimeograph machine technology, although vastly improved. This technology offers short-run, low-cost copies with spot color in a hurry. The reproduction at 300-400 dpi (dots per inch) is not high quality, but digital duplicators can be linked by PostScript for direct computer-to-printer simplicity, to deliver better quality than provided by scanned-in copy. Bindery operations, including trimming, collating, folding and stitching are done off-line (not incorporated into the printer). Two manufacturers dominate the digital duplicating market, Riso end Gestetner.

Discover Publishing in Palo Alto, Calif., a print shop that publishes weekly sermons and other religious information, switched from photo offset printing to a Gestetner CopyPrinter 5375 digital duplicator that allows it to print from 250 to 1,000 copies in-house on demand of some 1,600 different booklets each month.

"We used to have to print a lot of copies to bring down the cost-per-copy," says Gloria McGriff, publishing manager. "But then we wound up spending money storing the extras. Now we print only what is needed. Also, with the offset press, we had to keep it going all the time to make it economical.

"Now it takes about an hour to produce a two-color job, and we ship them around the world, wherever they're needed."

The company with the largest market share in digital duplicating is Riso. "I run 1 1/2 million copies a year on my Riso equipment," says Ken Grymala, owner of PrintWorks, Manassas, Va. Grymala prints two-and three-color brochures, often for government clients, many of whom have undergone downsizing and don't require long press runs.

"Now they want us to print and send off 250 flyers to Taiwan or Japan-they don't need 10,000 copies anymore," says Grymala. "At 1,000 copies or less, the Riso equipment prints at 60 percent the price of offset."