Digital Technologies for Books Reshaping All Production

An Interquest study entitled “The Digital Book and Manual Printing Opportunity” (2005) grouped both books and manuals together. This makes sense because many of the size formats and equipment required for books are the same as those for manuals.

The study concludes that the compound annual page growth from manuals will increase 7 percent and the page growth from books will increase 26 percent from 2004 to 2009. Though less than 5 percent of books and manuals are printed in color today this will grow to 15 percent, the study says, because of lower total costs associated with digital color printing.