Amazon.com Bringing HP Indigo Presses In-house to Print Books on Demand

PALO ALTO, CA—Dec. 4, 2006—HP announced that Amazon.com has elected to install multiple HP Indigo press 5000 machines to provide digital color printing for the online retailers’ expanding books-on-demand business. These color presses reportedly will operate in conjunction with existing black-and-white digital printing capabilities at several Amazon fulfillment centers. They are to be used for one-off to short-run color book production and printing of color covers for black-and-white book blocks.

“Through this collaboration, consumers will benefit from the integration of HP’s digital print technology and Amazon’s unmatched ability to offer the broadest selection of books possible,” said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and Printing Group, HP.

The books-on-demand market is expected to grow from approximately 20 billion book pages in 2006 to approximately 38 billion book pages by 2009 (according to data from the InterQuest research firm). This is due chiefly to the increasing demand for small-volume, rare and self-published books.

“Amazon is completely focused on the customer experience,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of books at Amazon.com. “This collaboration with HP will enable us to significantly increase the number of available titles our customers can purchase while offering publishers the highest quality color printing options.”

In addition to installing HP Indigo presses, Amazon’s facilities will be among the first in the United States to install the new HP Indigo Production Manager digital front-end controller, which combines HP IT and graphic arts technologies for rapid file processing in complex digital publishing scenarios.

HP provides the industry’s only high-end digital presses that use liquid ink for high-quality images that rival the offset print technology traditionally used in the book publishing world. Other print-on-demand applications produced on HP Indigo presses include everything from personalized marketing collateral to high-quality photobooks.

About HP
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company’s offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended Oct. 31, 2006, HP revenue totaled $91.7 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at www.hp.com.