Upgrade in Book Printing Technology, Digital Printing Reshapes Short-run Market

The book printing industry is undergoing a pattern reshaping of "long-run offset printing as the foundation, short-run digital printing leading innovation". The maturity of digital printing technology has ended the era of high costs for small-batch book production.

Traditional offset printing relies on plate-making (such as PS plate production), with a set of plates costing about 500 yuan and requiring 4-6 hours of debugging, suitable only for long-run printing of over 500 copies. In contrast, digital printing directly outputs digital files to paper through electrostatic imaging or inkjet technology, eliminating the plate-making link. The cost per copy is the same as for 500 copies, and the delivery time from file upload to finished product is only 8-24 hours. Data from an academic press shows that among its 300 annual academic monographs, 80% have a print run of less than 300 copies. After adopting digital printing, the production cycle of a single book has shortened from 15 days to 1 day, and inventory backlog has decreased by 60%.

In technical details, the color consistency of digital printing continues to improve. Through the ICC color management system, the color difference ΔE of books printed in different batches is controlled within 2 (imperceptible to the human eye), fully meeting the needs of text-based books. For art books with many pictures, inkjet digital printing has a resolution of 1200dpi, with dot reproduction close to offset printing, and supports spot color printing (such as gold and silver), adapting to more design needs.

In application fields, the short-run printing market has grown explosively. Small-scale books such as local chronicles and family genealogies from local cultural centers, often with a print run of 50-100 copies, have their costs reduced by 50% with digital printing. 讲义 and training manuals from educational institutions can be "printed on demand", avoiding waste from over-printing in traditional offset printing.

In the future, with the increase in digital printing speed (currently up to 300 pages per minute) and enhanced adaptability to special papers (such as rice paper and kraft paper), its application will expand from short-run to medium and long-run markets, complementing offset printing and making book printing more flexible in responding to market demands.