The demand for book printing, at least for consumer publishing, remains at an all-time high: more titles get produced every year, and print sales have been increasing during the pandemic. However, at the same time, printers and paper manufacturers have been declaring bankruptcy, closing, or consolidating, all due to business challenges mostly unconnected to the health of book publishing. Recently, the Book Industry Study Group offered updates on the health of the printing and paper supply chain, with an outlook for 2021 and beyond.
The majority of US book printers are still experiencing extended lead times, according to Matt Baehr of the Book Manufacturers’ Institute. Part of the challenge is pandemic related (not to mention the two biggest US printers sold off their book printing facilities last year). But there’s also been a labor shortage in book manufacturing for years. Even if printers want to run another shift, they can’t find the workers to make it happen.
Meanwhile, global freight and transportation has gone “crazy,” with long lead times for overseas goods, according to Baehr. There aren’t enough shipping containers for shipments, and there aren’t enough dock workers to unload existing containers. (For more on this, see recent New York Times coverage.) Bill Rojack of Midland Paper joked that you can walk across the Pacific Ocean from California to China on the line of waiting container boats. But the situation is unlikely to improve this year.
As a result, some publishers are bringing manufacturing back to the US from offshore printers, which has only increased lead times. Baehr sees publishers planning around capacity issues by doing longer print runs for titles that have a dependable lifecycle. BISG’s executive director, Brian O’Leary, commented to Baehr, “There’s a supply chain benefit to having the ability to produce closer to the actual sale. It’s hard to predict with absolute certainty a run in an overseas market, bring it into the US, and then store it as inventory.” Baehr agreed and said that, once upon a time, publishers might send most stock to Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But now consumers buy from a lot of different places. “It has shown the need to be more flexible and nimble with where your inventory is” and how much of it you have, he said.
Matt Kennell of Versa Press, a family-owned book printer since 1937, based in Peoria, Illinois, said they’re excited about the future and investing in new presses to better manage surges in demand and increase their capacity. He confirmed seeing both US and UK publishers moving from overseas printers and coming to them—to print in the end market where most of the books will sell.
Print on demand continues to grow and is part of the mix, too. Baehr said the quality of on-demand printing is increasing and has now matched the quality of offset in many instances. Backlist sales continue to grow, Baehr said, because titles now get a second life as print-on-demand, with lower inventory management costs.
Unfortunately for publishers, some paper mills have converted over to packaging—all those Amazon boxes—at the expense of book papers. The packaging materials market is an opportunity that paper manufacturers have been chasing to avoid closure or bankruptcy. Demand for the kind of paper that newspapers, magazines, retailers, and book publishers use—as well as your standard office copy paper—has diminished over time. Rojack said, “It’s startling how much the paper market has contracted.” Just the decline in magazine pages alone has been so dramatic that it affects how much paper is made and what kind. Over the last 20 years, some types of paper supply have declined by as much as 77 percent. And even though paper demand is expected to grow in 2021, in 2020 demand was down by 22 percent; in 2019, demand was down by 13 percent. Prices are increasing for paper as supply tightens, but also due to myriad complicating factors, such as increased freight and transportation costs, trade disputes, and tariffs.
Bottom line: The silver lining: books are cool again. Rojack said that for years he’s been touting the fact that the book market has been growing and that the number of titles continues to grow. “The book market is never going to contract,” he said. But the forces that affect printing and paper manufacturing are much bigger than the book publishing industry. Rojack advised publishers to decide who will be a stable supplier in all this—to find a partner who is likely to still be around “when the smoke clears.” Rather than fight over prices, he said, consider what price everyone needs to remain sustainable and still in business once the crisis passes. Despite the challenges that now face US book manufacturing, Baehr said, “The good news is we keep seeing more demand for the printed book.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
