That best-seller for the price of $12 is based on thousands of copies, many times printed in china and shipped by container loads. There's no way you can make it for a few dollars more for short run and survive the business.
>it's not hard, or all that capital- or even labor-intensive.
Yes its not difficult but if it is not capital intensive, it will most certainly be labor intensive. Printed through a digital copier, collated, perfect bound and trimmed in one process is not the issue. Having it done "ultra cheap one-off" is and any printer small or large will tell you the same.
The idea seems simple but no one is willing to do this for free or at a loss.
That best-seller for the price of $12 is based on thousands of copies, many times printed in china and shipped by container loads.
I think this is key. I'm quite disappointed that the NYT didn't mention China in the article.
A lot of high volume stuff is printed in China and takes the slow boat here. Domestic printers couldn't compete on price with that. So now they no longer have the onshore capability to print large numbers of books here.
This is Economics 101.
The article literally says “All of the sudden, there’s just no capacity”, and follows with "One large printing company, Edward Brothers Malloy, shut down this summer."
Well, duh. The publishers switched to printing in China. So what the fuck were domestic printers supposed to do?
>it's not hard, or all that capital- or even labor-intensive.
Yes its not difficult but if it is not capital intensive, it will most certainly be labor intensive. Printed through a digital copier, collated, perfect bound and trimmed in one process is not the issue. Having it done "ultra cheap one-off" is and any printer small or large will tell you the same.
The idea seems simple but no one is willing to do this for free or at a loss.