Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
I don't think that Heidelberg's problems have anything to do with e-books; printing companies have been suffering basically since the rise of the personal computer*, and the decline of print newspapers and magazines has hurt them too.
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Yes, the PC desktop publishing revolution of the 80's and its followups in the 90's have hurt printing companies for a long time, especially in the corporate arena. (Been there, done my bit.
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But I was (jokingly, in view of the thread topic) referring to the fact that pbook economics are non-linear; small print runs are more expensive than bigger ones and many small runs are no substitute, profit-wise, for one big one. Yet all we hear from the woe-is-us pbook camp is exactly that; the future is less books being published and smaller print runs. If that materializes as they claim--and I for one think it will--pbook economics will only get worse and that means that any printing machinery manufacturer that may be facing problems now isn't looking at an easy road ahead. Their challenge isn't lack of growh anymoree butt more like managing reduced demand.
The thing is, with the trad-pub advocates in the media currently spinning scenarios like crazy, looking to convince themselves that ebook adoption has peaked, that the worst is past, that the years-long gradual decline in pbook sales won't continue--A campaign that this poll appears to have been commisioned to support--it wouldn't be too hard to see a government bureaucrat buying into the narrative and acting to provide "temporary" support to the pbook infrastructure manufacturers to help them weather the "temporary" disruption until the pbook business returns to "normal".
On the one hand we have the BPHs reporting steady, continuous declines in trade pbook sales that are only being compensated for by ebook sales, and on the other we have this report pretending that ebook appeal is limited.
I dunno, but if both are true then you would expect the trade publishing business to get worse rather than better.
As I said above, the poll results aren't saying what some people think they are saying. Placed in the full context of the market as it exists, this poll is bad news for print-advocates.