Opportunities and challenges in Publishing

Ricoh Lloyd – Global Offset to Digital Offerings Manager, Ricoh

At a recent event at Ricoh Production Print Solutions (Ricoh) headquarters in Boulder, I joined key thought leaders and influencers in the book publishing and manufacturing industry to talk about what challenges they’re facing, and ways that we can all work together to figure out what comes next and how to leverage these new technologies and applications to better their overall business. So when I was asked to speak at drupa, I wanted to be sure I brought these learnings with me to the world’s biggest printing show. My talk “Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing”, is going to be a dive into the new challenges that the publishing industry is facing, and a look at the many possible solutions Ricoh’s printing technology can offer.

Book printers and publishers are facing a set of new and dizzying decisions in today’s marketplace – this is something we all know. Customers’ expectations have dramatically changed in a short period of time, leaving these companies to play technological catch-up. With the proliferation of e-readers and tablets, e-books are now, in some cases, starting to outsell their physical counterparts. Overall declining volumes means increased competition leaving smaller business very vulnerable. And to top things off, the demise of the Net Book Agreement, at least in Europe, means that publishers are not able to set the end user-prices, while paper and production costs are increasing—printers are being squeezed at both ends.

The challenge ahead is to determine how to streamline publishing processes to keep up with existing customers and customer demand, while being able to accommodate new business opportunities. We must ask ourselves how to respond to the customer who once wanted a thousand copies of a single book, but now wants one copy of a thousand. We have to decide how to provide the ultra-short book run the customer is seeking in a cost and time efficient manner. These are just a few of the new obstacles printers are facing.

Yet, this is an exciting time. Change is good for the industry and the future is bright for publishers. Despite the industry’s uncertainty I think it’s an opportunity for businesses to become more agile, creative and profitable: in other words, to thrive. In short, I believe the answer lies in digital printing. As we have noticed the changes and challenges in the industry, we at Ricoh have really thought about the most practical and successful ways to partner with publishers to make the shift to digital publishing, and take advantage of the ease, flexibility, and automation it offers. Minor headaches like a missing or damaged page in a book is now a major problem with financial repercussions. In my session, I’ll cover specific ways in which we can help you to turn these problems into opportunities to save time and money, and adapt to the changing landscape of print publishing.

Hope to see you there!

To book onto Rich Lloyd’s seminar, please login to the Ricoh drupa website at drupa2012.ricoh-europe.com or Register using the Link above.