thinking globally, printing locally

1 | Thinking globally, printing locally.

Thinking globally,

How publishers are looking to bounce back in trying times.

printing locally.

HP Publishing Solutions


For publishers, change and uncertainty is never far from their door. Fluctuating trends in commercial popularity, the

emergence of audiobooks, eBooks, online retailers and the slow demise of the independent bookstore are just some of the examples of what the publishing industry has had to contend with in the past few years. Before that, the explosion of the internet and subsequent boom in digital media consumption meant that publishers’ models needed to adapt to remain viable.

The publishing industry has always had to adapt to circumstances that are largely out of their control.

And over the last year or so they’ve had to transform, as has every other industry, in response to a changing world and a disrupted supply chain with some areas of the industry showing remarkable resilience and even growth. Assessing the fallout from one of the biggest upheavals to life any of us will ever experience, the impact on the industry is irrefutable. The global book publishers market is expected to decline from $92.8 billion in 2019 to $85.9 billion in 2020 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -7.5%. “The decline is mainly due to economic slowdown across countries owing to the COVID-19 outbreak and the measures to contain it.”¹

So how does the industry plot a course forward and back into growth? Knowing what the next big trends are, both inside and outside of the industry, can help publishers forecast and plan for the future with confidence. And one opportunity in particular is appealing to many publishers as they look to expand and explore new revenue streams.


Think globally, act locally is a phrase that has been used for some time, popularised over recent years and used almost as a shorthand by people and organisations driving awareness of the health of the planet. Organisations across the world are on a digital journey, focused to varying degrees on using digital solutions to change the way they do business to drive themselves forward whilst considering the wellbeing of the planet. The publishing industry is no different, with publishers looking to enable a digital-first approach to publishing content, future proofing both their businesses and the future of the world, while increasing efficiencies.

Across the industry, there has been a growing shift towards a strategy of on-demand, with events of 2020 only compounding this trend. The ‘print crunch’ caused by COVID-19 saw publishers experiencing a severely impaired ability to publish with supply chains located in regions with lengthy and varying lockdowns. Fluid and fast-changing international trade situations such as Brexit also left best laid plans in tatters.

Getting started in new countries and setting up new networks in unfamiliar locales is never simple, but growing complexities have the potential to turn reaching new markets into a more difficult undertaking than it already was.

While ‘print on demand’ isn’t a new concept, it perhaps hasn’t always been a simple offering to understand, get started or make work for you. But, done correctly, it can drive efficiencies of time and cost to both publishers and their customers wherever they are located. And so when many other areas of industry have benefited from the cloud and on-demand, the question has to be asked; why not printing?

On-demand publishing: a new trend?


Why traditional supply chains don’t always work for on-demand printing

Publishers’ traditional supply chains have their strengths and weaknesses. They are well suited for managing their main catalogues and best-selling titles, which can be forecasted with relative accuracy. However, publishers face more challenging circumstances when managing the production requirements of their front list and back list titles, with existing supply chains often too slow, too cumbersome or too prone to external forces to truly be able to deliver on-demand printing. Existing supply chain relationships are, for the most part, simply not fast enough to respond, and don’t truly give ‘on demand’ capabilities.

To enable geographical expansion and the reaching of new markets, publishers have historically needed to search out and establish relationships with new suppliers. Gaining access to these new markets and managing an increasingly large supply chain can become time consuming and a burden

on resource that may already be at capacity. This can make expanding into new territories a difficult practice to scale. Any existing networks that allow publishers to cut down on the volume of suppliers they use will be a welcome solution.


At a time when margins are tight and demand can be hard to predict and fulfil, established printing models used by the industry may not satisfy the diverse needs publishers now have. The traditional physical repository of warehoused stock works for titles that are forecast to sell well. But what of smaller titles, more niche publications or items that require the smallest of print runs? Minimum print runs will be too high, with too long a turn-around time, and too expensive. A solution offering print-on-demand to a ‘book of one’ capability becomes hugely desirable in these circumstances. If this solution were to offer a single source of supply regardless of location or volume, it would represent a huge change in the way publishers are able to conduct business.

With global health a concern not just for every business but for every person on the planet, book miles, the distance a publication is traveling before fulfilling its order, becomes an increasingly important consideration for publishers also.

Placing efficiency at the heart of publishing has never been easy

A GREEN AND MORE EFFICIENT PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

In 2020, 99% of paper used by HarperCollins UK & European offices

was FSC certified.²

In France, Hachette Livre reduced its carbon footprint by 18.5% over

ten years since 2009. The Group introduced carbon labelling of its

books, informing readers of the carbon footprint of the book they are holding.³


Achieving efficiency of distance of travel is an area that many publishers using traditional supply chains can look for improvement in. It’s a problem for which printing closer to point of consumption is the answer. Printing closer to the end-user also has the benefit of making it easier to deliver directly to the point of order, removing unnecessary processes while easing shipping costs and lowering the publisher’s carbon footprint.

And once orders have been fulfilled, achieving an overview of efficiency can be difficult, especially when you factor in different reporting formats with varying accuracies coming from

across the supply chain. As a supply chain grows and grows, a publisher’s ability to not just collate their performance data but also trust it can become impacted to the point where it is no longer useful.

When technology advancements outpace your ways of working, change is required

New technology entering the market has meant that change is never far away in the publishing industry. From the printing press to the eReader, huge jumps in what publishers are able to do, and what the public expects, come thick and fast. In particular of late, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being explored by publishing houses, driving areas such

as content discoverability and market growth prediction.

Being able to use tech to predict potential expansion regions and, indeed, regions within which demand may contract, is very attractive to publishers who are looking to use forecasting to target growth areas.


The kind of foresight afforded by AI will mean that more publishers will be looking to tap into existing and flexible supply chain networks in new locations in order to satisfy newly-identified demand.

Printer capabilities and technology solutions are also constantly evolving. Both a publisher’s and a supplier’s ability to keep up with the latest technology, trends or printing methods can be expensive, requires upkeep and can vary from location to

location, across the globe. Publishers with a diverse set of printing needs will know that matching printer capabilities to the type of book format and page count required comes from experience. Errors can be costly and time-consuming to resolve, eating into margins that are already paper thin. With different machines printing to different specs and quality, publishers can find that stock can be lost, contracts unfulfilled and SLAs not hit because of inconsistent print quality. Ensuring consistency of print quality from one location to another, across a global network of production partners, is no mean feat. What publishers need is a solution that can provide proven quality at scale, from the smallest demand in one region to multi-region, multi-format printing.

| Thinking globally, printing locally.8

Adapting beyond the traditional supply chainPrinting on-demand has never been so easy. HP Book as a Service allows publishers to tap into a pre-existing global supply network. By accessing HP’s Global Print Partner Network, publishers can leverage expertise and experience while gaining peace of mind by eliminating the risks associated with geographical expansion.

Efficiency at the core of everythingHP Book as a Service gives you print-on-demand capabilities, closer to your end-user, down to a ‘book of one’. That means no inventory taking up space in storage facilities, a reduction in overheads and the ability to satisfy any order, from the biggest to the smallest. HP Book as a Service can also provide publishers with access to data and analytics from one single source, helping them to see the big picture and drive efficiencies across the board.

Delivering speed, agility and the highest print quality HP Book as a Service helps publishers to print at the closest point to market demand, whilst accessing the broadest range of market-leading digital print technology. HP Book as a Service also allows publishers to fully manage and automate production orders via API integration. Publishers can achieve better quality and more consistent printed products using HP’s global print partner network.

How HP Publishing Solutions is well placed to help the industry

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Randall HP Publishing Solutions Product Marketing Manager

Paul Randall leads the Product Marketing Team within the HP Publishing Solutions Organisation. The organisation’s ambition is to enable Publishers to have more time to focus on what they publish, rather than how, as HP brings to market solutions that reduce production complexity and automate scalable distributed print.

Contact us to find out more: [email protected]

Publishers that sell to a variety of multinational markets have historically required complex supply chain solutions to execute their localised strategies. These supply chains can take years of experience and knowhow to establish, secure and flourish. And yet more time to manage on a day-to-day basis. To simplify the processes required to produce books globally, on demand, publishers should look no further than HP’s globally distributed print network and Book as a Service.

Are you interested in learning more about how you can tap into an established global print partner network and access new markets at scale? Find out how HP Book as a Service can help you achieve global reach with efficiency, speed and an on-demand responsiveness you and your end customers will love.

1- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/book-publishers-industry-to-decline-from-92-8-billion-in-2019-to-85-9-billion-in-2020---trends--implications-of-covid-19--301065356.html

2- https://corporate.harpercollins.co.uk/about-us/environment/

3- https://www.hachette.com/en/social-and-environmental-responsibility/

4AA7-9701ENW, March 2021

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