Quebecor World Direct

If 2007 goes down as “The Year of RR Donnelley,” it will do so as a result of a 65-day span at the turn of the year during which the conglomerate announced it would acquire three industry stalwarts: Perry Judd’s, Von Hoffman and Banta Corp. But the past year has been about more than consolidation and leveraged buyouts. North American printers continue to grapple with the mounting menace that is offshore manufacturing, fluctuating paper prices amid a series of mill shutdowns, and the ever-evolving technological demands of their customers. And yet, despite these challenges, there are also a number of opportunities facing the market.

In Part I of this series, I described how supply chain thinking can be applied to business and career decisions. Correctly identifying your “value proposition” is the key to being able to diagram where in the chain of buying and selling relationships you can be most effective. Building on your core competencies, and recognizing that you need to manage your supply chain relationships becomes the business proposition. Chances are that when you first examine your supply chain, you will find that you have been a slave to it, rather than a master of it. I also noted that by rethinking and realistically recasting your

Choosing a cover-material supplier or deciding to switch to a new provider can seem like a game that we don’t know how to play. Knowing what materials are available and which would work best for the look and feel you are trying to achieve for your next book project can be tricky ... and even risky. A bad decision can break a book—after all, aren’t books judged by their covers? Fortunately, representatives at most cover-material companies are available to walk you through the process helping you discover what qualities and features are most important for your needs. “So many questions have to be

Chuck Nason admits he wasn’t fully prepared for the effects of global competition as it accelerated in 2001. The president and CEO of Worzalla Publishing, a Stevens Point, Wis.-based book manufacturer, watched as a significant portion of the company’s four-color children’s book work went to China. “Global competition has affected us in a major way,” Nason contends. “It caused us to suffer a five-year slide in annual sales from just over $62 million to $44.4 million a year ago. This has meant little or no wage increases for our employees and a freeze on capital equipment purchases for four years.” Nason points out what

Manufacturing plant closings aren’t exactly unheard of in this industry, and never is the news of a plant closing received without some pangs of distress for the employees, their families, the local communities, and even the company’s corporate officers who are forced to make such difficult decisions and handle the ensuing layoffs. But some plant closing announcements seem to hit the industry a little harder than others. The recent announcement by Quebecor World that it will close its Kingsport, Tenn., book manufacturing facility is one example. “Anyone in book publishing … probably knows the name Kingsport,” says Martin Maloney, chairman of the public

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

In compiling the Top 30 Book Manufacturers for our print issue (May/June), some privately held companies, whose revenues may have qualified them to be ranked, chose not to participate. In order to recognize all the book manufacturers surveyed for the ranking, BookTech editors compiled this alphabetical listing. Ambrose Printing, Nashville, Tenn. Alcom Printing Group, Harleysville, Pa. Balmar Inc., Falls Church, Va. Banta Corp., Menasha, Wis. Bertelsmann Arvato, New York Bolger Concept to Print, Minneapolis Burton & Mayer, Brookfield, Wis. Cadmus Communications, Richmond, Va. Carter Printing, Richmond, Va. Cavanaugh Press, Baltimore Cedar Graphics, Hiawatha, Iowa CJK, Cincinnati Commercial Communications, Hartland, Wis. Courier Corp., N. Chelmsford, Mass. Dickinson Press, Grand Rapids, Mich. Dollco Printing, Ottawa Dome Printing, Sacramento, Calif. Edwards Brothers, Ann Arbor, Mich. EP

Book manufacturers and publishers used to squeeze each other to cut costs at the other's expense. Now they are cutting costs together in partnerships of convenience. Welcome to 2004. It's like 2003, only the recession's grip has lessened. Production managers continue to shave a penny here, save a dollar there, while keeping up hope that the vaunted recovery will hit their employer's slice of the book publishing industry soon. Meanwhile, large retail and bookstore chains are returning books by the truckload, according to industry regulars. This dilutes revenues and increases costs for the publishers, leaving them with diminished cash flow and pinched

The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary introduces a significant innovation in dictionary publishing. For the first time, the popularly priced standard edition of the dictionary is not a print product alone. Each copy is bundled with a CD-ROM edition and a one-year subscription to Merriam-Webster Online, a premium Web site offering exclusive access to the online edition and other reference sources, all built atop the same database. Nothing like this has been done before in dictionary publishing, and for good reasons, known as "the three C's": cost, cannibalization, and cross-platform development. Cost for a dictionary is usually thought of

As the world turns, so does the book manufacturing industry. International affairs brought both pessimism and hope to an industry still in the throes of a sputtering global economy. On the upside: a new Harry Potter title and Hillary Clinton's memoirs have legions of readers shelling out cash at bookstores nationwide. Indeed, the Association of American Publishers, Washington, reports U.S. book sales rose 5.5% in 2002, to $27 billion—proving once again that, no matter how bad things seem, you can't keep a good book down. Or a good book manufacturer. Despite competitive market conditions, high unemployment, war in the Middle East, a dearth of