Digital Technologies for Books Reshaping All Production

A CONTROVERSY is brewing about the future of book and manual production. Some people say they are going away; I believe book production is evolving from a labor intensive, manual process to an automated, template-based digital process.

The argument that book and manual production are dead cites evidence of dwindling book readership, numbers of book publishers, comparisons of the costs of long offset runs verses shorter digital runs and the book distribution model. On the other side of the coin is the argument that print production is morphing with digital printing and online technologies; those who take advantage of this evolution will be able to use it for any printing application capable of digital transference.