The Influence Of Digital Technologies On Print Publishing?

Chris Garfield

GAR14437540

MA Publishing

Unit 1.1

The Influence of Digital Technologies on Print Publishing The publishing industry has experienced massive changes over the past decade. With the introduction and development of digital technologies, publishers have had to learn to adapt their methods and embrace these advances. Books and magazines are no longer bought solely at book stores, read only through physical copies and the way we market and distribute a publication has migrated mostly online, causing the traditional publishing model to be skewed. These new found technologies are a positive addition to the publishing field, allowing for more growth in a variety of areas and helping keep traditional print publishing alive. In this essay

47). These set of activities have now been streamlined and made efficient through digital technologies. This shift has made it incredibly easy for creators to publish, market and distribute on their own, threatening the importance of major publishers and creating a resurgence of self-publishers. In the past, self-publishing was considered to be amateurish and only done if your work was considered not good enough by professional publishers. Megan Le Masurier states that “Digital technology indeed promises to solve a number of problem experienced by the [print] industry: distribution, paper and printing costs, environmental waste, geographical isolation of potential readers, lack

Digital printers has made it so publishers are able to do low print runs and even print on demand. In the past, publishers have been limited to offset printing, which is generally “very high [quality], and once the printing job has been set up, the cost per page is low” (Thompson, 2005, p. 421). Offset printing is very time-consuming because plates have to be created for each page, so for low print runs it would be considered uneconomical. Although it is hard to match the printing quality of an offset print run, digital printers have been developed in recent years that are almost exact matches. This allows books to be printed without plates, and makes low print runs possible, and cost efficient. Digital printing is very attractive to independent publications, as they are more likely to be working with a lower budget and planning low print