Offshoring and the Global Marketplace

"[Not often considered] is the ratio of labor and materials to a job, and the fact that materials offshore are priced considerably less than here, even when they are the same materials. Presses in Hong Kong cost a lot less than the same model here, and paper which is 79 cents/pound here is 39 cents in Asia," Coburn explains.

His work at a government printing office in Greece, and in print management and expansion for the United Nations in Southeast Asia exposed him to the global economy and international cost structures. "The low wages or long hours of some countries are usually conjoined with high inefficiency rates to make the … cost higher than an efficient higher-paid country. Sri Lanka is more expensive than the Philippines, and [the Philippines] more expensive than Thailand, and Thailand more expensive than Hong Kong—all of this in extreme reverse ratio to their wage rates," he explains.

Fueling the Swell

While most book publishers source work to Europe and Asia, even countries as far offshore as Australia are meeting with some interest or at least some open minds. Nearly 25 percent of American publishers expressed an interest in obtaining information on Australian book printers and their capabilities, according to a study by the Australian Trade Commission, of 75 key U.S. publishers.

The annual print budget of those who indicated an interest was estimated at more than $330 million, giving another country a taste of what the American marketplace has to offer. "The book-exporting opportunities identified by this snapshot study of American publishers is greater than the turnover of the entire Australian book-printing industry," said Hagop Tchamkertenian, manager of industry and commercial policy for the Printing Industries Association of Australia (which commissioned the survey), in a report on PrintNet, an online resource for the organization.