Digital Printing

Ricoh, a leading provider of digital output solutions, today announced that BR Printers has chosen the InfoPrint 5000 to meet the high demands of its customers who sought both color and monochrome short runs of books.

Quad/GraphicS, which has expanded its digital book production capacity by more than 500 percent this year, announces a new agreement with Penguin Group (USA) Inc., one of the leading U.S. adult and children’s trade book publishers, for short-run and print-on-demand production of Penguin’s U.S. trade hardcover, trade paperback and mass market books. The agreement covers all of Penguin’s imprints.

Leading U.K. book Printer Clays has announced the installation of a Kodak Prosper 1000 Press as part of its integrated book production line, which includes a Muller Martini Sigmaline In-Line Finishing System. The integrated book line with the Prosper 1000 Press is up and running after a smooth installation period.

Direct mail, books and bills/statements, projected to be the top three digital production printing applications by 2015, are expected to exceed page volumes of over 270 billion impressions, according to InfoTrends’ recently published “U.S. Digital Production Printing Application Forecast: 2010-2015.”

On Demand Books the company behind the Espresso Book Machine (EBM), has announced it will register the EBM network of over 7 million (and growing) paperback titles with Google Merchant Center. As a result, all EBM titles will become available for discovery and purchase via the Google Books website and the Google "Shopping" feature.

Edwards Brothers announced the opening of a digital print center in Oxnard, Calif., making it the tenth digital print center owned or operated by Edwards Brothers.

Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all.

The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was circa 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. But if you go back further there’s a more helpful precedent for what’s going on.

Commercial printer and publishing solutions provider Creel Printing has acquired Digital Lizard, gaining state-of-the-art digital capabilities.

During the past 18 months, digital printing has dramatically increased its penetration of the book market. The recession has in some cases provided a boost to digital book manufacturing, as publishers take a harder look at their processes and cut back on inventory and waste.

Ingram Content Group Inc. today announced the launch of Global CONNECT, a new worldwide program.