Opinion: Print is Far from Dead
Although the printing industry in the U.S. economy is definitely undergoing tremendous change, it should be noted here-in the first issue of web-based Ps & Qs – that print is far from dead.
The results of a panel discussion at Seybold Seminars 2000 earlier this year in Boston led Gene Gable, general manger of Seybold, to write a commentary that appeared in that organization’s web-based publication in which he said that commercial printing is virtually a no growth industry. He went on to say that this is the same as defining it as an industry in decline.
Actually, current statistics on the industry don’t wholly support this. The jury may well be out on some of the long-term prospects for the industry, and we can assume that the next generation will be more glued than ever to their computer screens, but print is definitely here to stay for a variety of practical reasons.
At Graph Expo, Joe Webb from Trendwatch declared that 1999 will be remembered as the year when print started giving way to other means of mass communication. But Thad McIlroy, president of Arcadia House, refuted this at Seybold in Boston, commenting that, “There’s a ton of good news” to rebut any claims that print is dead, or even ailing. He had the numbers to prove his point. Direct mail volume has been soaring, accounting for 44% of all mail handled by the U.S. Postal Service today compared with 32% in 1978. Paper and envelope sales also are at record highs.
The long-term trend for the industry, however, is not so rosy. After experiencing double-digit growth rates prior to 1988, growth declined to 5% through the mid-’90s, and then to slower-to-negative rates since 1997.
There are some specific reasons for this. Print is giving way to other forms of mass media, particularly the Web. For example, more software manuals that were traditionally printed on paper are being produced online. The trend for catalogues is the same, as many move to either a CD-ROM format or the Web.
The power of the Web continues to grow in other ways as well. The average adult spent 81 hours reading print magazines in 1999, compared with 97 hours doing the same online, according to Veronis, Suhler & Associates. And declining readerships among the nation’s print-based newspapers is a familiar story. In another poll taken by Veronis and Suhler, 80% of the respondents said they read a newspaper regularly in 1961 compared with 58% in 1999.
But the long-term prospects for the industry are not all doom and gloom. Although Gable makes the point that kids are not as attached to books as baby-boomers in the U.S, most children are nonetheless still learning to read from print-based books.
I read as many as 40 novels a year (in addition to a host of industry related material), and none of them are on the computer. And I have been using a computer since I was in the 7th grade. What kids are into with computers these days are electronic games, and this points more to the way they are learning to interface with computers than what they are learning through them. As these kids grow up, they will want to carry over the ease of access they have come to expect from computer game systems into how they get business done through information systems. They will be efficient at extracting specific information from the Web and then have enough time to take a break in the sun with their favorite book or magazine.
This leads to three powerful reasons why print is not going away anytime soon: it is highly portable, it offers the best user interface, and it is very simple to use. Everybody on the planet basically knows how to get information out of something printed, either through illustrations or text in a variety of languages. Not until it becomes more effective to teach kids to read on a computer screen will the utility of print-based materials as an educational tool reach a crossroads.
Gable notes that many schools are looking at e-books as a possible way to keep text more current for kids and prevent them from having to lug around heavy backpacks full of books, but there is an affordability factor here that is going to keep e-books out of the hands of many children until this form of media delivery becomes a commodity. This fact alone will keep a lot of publishers in business for years to come.
Lastly, Gable points out that a number of companies are working on e-paper -re-usable sheets of electronic paper produced from hybrid substances that can be imaged over and over again. E-paper combines the benefits of electronic documents with the practicality of printed ones. And they are significantly easier on the environment.
No one’s more in love with the concept of digital paper than me. I read science fiction novels about it. With digital paper, you can pick the book you want and then format its contents to your liking. And the computer-based power requirements for e-paper go away once you have the contents of the book or document set. As soon as digital paper can be produced in a cost-effective way, it may start to compete with books. Digital paper exists now, but it will still be 5-10 years before it becomes available on the market.
So where does all this leave the print industry? Quite alive and kicking.
Predictions were made years ago that the paperless office would be upon us by the year 2000, but that is not happening. Some things, such as computer manuals, are more effective to produce digitally. And other consumer information products are ripe to go digital, such as telephone directories that must be updated annually and consume a huge amount of paper that often ends up in landfills.
But really, it all comes back to practicality. Having information always somewhere out there in the ether is going to be disconcerting for a lot of people who would prefer to have their most vital information accessible in print from their files at home. Consider packaging alone. There is no digital equivalent to it. You can’t wrap a box of doughnuts in a computer screen. The packaging industry is a huge part of the print industry that will be one of the last to go digital.
Print is far from dead.
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