In 2012, the printing industry outlook remains challenging, with a slow recovery

By Mark Smith

"We expect industry sales to be essentially flat this year [2011]," he predicts, "somewhere between up 0.5 percent and down 0.5 percent." Paparozzi calculates his industry numbers in real, or inflation-adjusted, terms.

What's behind the disappointing industry outlook is the continued pressure on prices, says Paparozzi. That growth/loss percentage range obviously isn't what the industry would like to see, but "it's a lot better than where we've been, with sales down 1.7 percent in 2010, -15 percent in 2009 and -5.3 percent in 2008. It shows that our industry continues to heal—albeit painfully slowly and maddeningly inconsistently—from the Great Recession," he asserts.