King Printing Co. Inc.

We know that books printed digitally have tended to be, like the old stitch about newspapers, black and white and read all over. For most of digital printing's existence, producing professional four-color books just wasn't possible; you had to use offset. But the times they are a-changing, and technological advances are making the production of full-color books in longer short runs more feasible and economical than ever before. The advent of sheetfed digital printing brought us the ability to print full-color books in very short runs—it was responsible for opening up the high-growth photo book market. Now "4-up" and roll-fed "printer/presses" are further changing the full-color publishing paradigm.

Before we go further, let's define some terms, as printers are, in essence, quite different from presses. Printers regenerate the impression for each copy from a digital file, which allows them to use electronic collation and print the pages of a book block in order. Presses, on the other hand, use a physical image carrier (a plate) to reproduce large printed sheets which are folded into signatures, gathered and bound. But printers become, in essence, presses when either the sheet size or output speed starts to approach the specs of an analog reproduction device (aka a press). A "printer/press" is my term for printers that have many characteristics of a press.

Digital printing has saved the book industry. The old business model that printed an excess of books has been replaced for many titles by a more efficient on-demand model. Consider my personal example: Back in 1972, I wanted to self-publish a book. I only wanted 500 copies, but the printer said the minimum run was 5,000. I still have 4,000 copies in the warehouse, because someone may want a book on 1970s phototypesetting some day.

We asked Noelle Skodzinski, Editorial Director for Book Business and Publishing Executive, to answer a few questions about just how today's FREE Publishing Business Virtual Conference & Expo all goes down.

There are just nine business days until the third annual Publishing Business Virtual (PBV) Conference & Expo (produced by Publishing Executive and Book Business magazines). Have you registered?

King Printing has become the first North American book manufacturer to install a new HP T350 Color Inkjet Web Press speed upgrade.

The high reliability, productivity and quality that the short-run book manufacturing specialist based in Lowell, MA, gained with its HP T300 Color Inkjet Web Press led to the upgrade decision. Now, King Printing’s HP T350 Inkjet Web Press is 50 percent faster than its previousl, running at 600 fpm and producing up to 3,927 ppm (letter-size).

INTERQUEST, a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry, today announced that Lulu.com