2.7 Print-on-demand

The editorial community harbors considerable disagreement over the mitigating effects of digital technology onthe costs of illustration programs and inventory. Quite apart from transitional anxieties about the loss of the book as artifact andthe inability of the screen image to match the simulative power of the color print reproduction, editors point out that the costs ofillustration programs depend in good part on the human labor costs of design, layout, permissions enforcement, and image checks andcalibrations, and that electronic cost-savings in those domains have already been maximized over the past two decades. And yet,most editors agree that it is intuitively obvious that without the expenses of offset printing, paper stock, binding, inventorymaintenance, and shipping, digital publication would almost certainly be more cost-effective than print publication.

It appears that the cost savings of fully digital publication in art history have not been studiedcomprehensively by the publishing industry, in part because of considerable skepticism over the acceptability to authors, readers,and credentialing committees of purely digital delivery. When asked whether print-on-demand technology might offer a more acceptablespin-off product that would allow publishers to reduce print runs radically, control inventory costs, and maintain books in printindefinitely, most editors initially reacted with skepticism because the loss of image quality was felt to be too compromisingand unlikely to be improved within the next few years.

This tepid response was surprising as print-on-demand products involving images are developing rapidly inthe popular and trade domain. Such applications include newspaper kiosks in airports, where readers may print out tabloid editions ofmajor international broadsheets, and albums of digital images ordered through the internet from a central printer. Companies suchas Apple provide the album templates, the consumer composes the album—effectively acting as self-publisher—and orders it according to a menu of printing and binding specifications. The providerprints and ships the bound album to the consumer, often within two business days. Over the past decade, print-on-demand companies suchas Lightning Resource have developed flexible and efficient reader fulfillment services for trade book publishers as well.

Scholarly publishers, with their small print runs and inventory headaches, stand to benefit even more from suchoutsourcing. As niche products, scholarly monographs on highly specialized topics are likely to recover their production costsmore predictably if consistently available over many years, rather than relying on illusory blockbuster sales in the first year or twoof publication. Print-on-demand technology may soon make this business model feasible for art history publication.

More recently, art history editors have begun to discuss the positive impact of print-on-demand on inventorycosts. They have also registered improvements in the technology to such an extent that a copy of an illustrated book printed on demandmay soon be sufficiently close in quality to one printed in an editorially supervised print run. In 2006, the University of Chicago Press published John Hyman's The Objective Eye: Color, Form, and Reality in the Theory of Art (a smallish, handsome book with black and white figures as well as color plates) in a hardbackrun of 200 for libraries and a slightly larger paperback run, while simultaneously commissioning a trial print-on-demand version thatmay be released when the initial print runs are sold. While the print-on-demand paper is of a rougher texture and black and whiteillustrations look more obviously pixelated than their counterparts in the book produced by a traditional printer, the illustrationsare clearly legible and make their points quite well. The press considers the proof product an impressive auguryof improvements soon to come.