Warren Chiara

As professors begin creating their course plan for the year, often they’ll select a title that they once used during their days as an undergrad or graduate student, not realizing that the title has been pulled from the backlist of the publisher as ‘out of print.’ The advent of short-run digital technology has allowed publishers to offer books that are no longer in print in quantities anywhere from one to a few thousand. The technology in recent years also has opened up custom publishing divisions at major educational publishers. Pearson Education is one of several large educational book publishers to offer such a

“Consumer-Centric Publishing” was the theme for this year’s Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) Publishing University, established to help member publishers deliver focused training from a Christian publishing perspective. ECPA chose this theme for the second annual event, held in Bloomingdale, Ill., outside of Chicago, to enhance the publishing professional’s understanding of their customers’ needs. ECPA divided the conference into six educational tracks—advanced management, editorial and content development, marketing and sales management, production and prepress management, information technologies and systems, and publishing 101. The conference featured four plenary sessions designed to help the nearly 400 attendees understand the Christian consumer, the markets in which they

The 18th annual Gold Ink Awards honor the truly exceptional among more than 200 pieces submitted in the book categories. As the weather heated up in the early part of June, so did the excitement around the offices of North American Publishing Co. (BookTech's parent) as judges from varied backgrounds in the graphic arts industry convened to judge the 18th annual Gold Ink Awards. This year's judges had their work cut out for them as almost 1,500 entries were submitted into the competition, with 203 pieces entered into the eight book categories alone. Over the course of four days, the esteemed judges pored over

Mergers and acquisitions in the print industry over the past year resulted in some changes at the top of BookTech Magazine's annual Top Book Manufacturing listing—ranked by book-manufacturing revenue. One change concerns the perennial Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on our list. When RR Donnelley acquired Moore Wallace last year, it changed the way the $8 billion company breaks down its revenues. It used to report the performance of individual units, but now casts revenues into two major business components: publishing and retail services, and integrated print communications and global solutions business. The latter category accounts for 40.2 percent of RR Donnelley revenues. Of

Competition in the book market is often fierce, and many book designers opt for foil, metallic, UV coating, or new or unusual substrates to set their titles apart and attract consumers. The challenges in committing to such innovative techniques are often difficulty, cost and production deadlines—using alternative materials can be more expensive, more complex to produce and more time-consuming. What it often comes down to is: Will the potential added time and expense translate into additional sales for this specific title? Some considerations publishers have to weigh before adding extras are the prestige of the author or project, the quality of the project

And the winners of the 17th annual Gold Ink Awards are … As summer rolls into fall, it's time once again to announce, and display on these pages, the winners in the book competition of the 2004 Gold Ink Awards, which has earned the respect of some of the most renowned producers of printed material in the industry. Over the course of three days, our esteemed judges poured over entries in 46 categories, including eight book categories, debating the merits and sweating over each nuance of the 1,574 submissions before bestowing a gold, silver or bronze designation on a winner. It was tiring work