Signs of printing's future

I went to the Print Buyers International conference in Boston this week. Margie Dana, the show's organizer, is a combination coach and cheerleader for the printing industry, and boy, do we need one.
When I wasn't manning the RR Donnelley booth in the library-quiet exhibit hall, I managed to take in a session by Frank Romano on digital print. Frank's lectures are noted for their imaginative use of video, and I was reminded of a YouTube video that was making the rounds among my graphic-arts buddies last year.
In it, a printer stands outside his shop, pumping his fists and screaming, "I f--ing love printing! I love the smell of ink! Love to spread it on my toast like f--ing Nutella!" About halfway though his three-and-a-half-minute rant, he shouts, "Now they try to tell me that computers are replacing printing! No, we conquered the computers! Now they work for us! Can you string a computer across the wall at a party that says 'Happy Birthday'? Can you fit a computer on a water bottle that says 'Evian'?"

I was inspired to start blogging in part by a conversation I had with Scott-Martin Kosofsky, the incumbent president of the Society of Printers, a 103-year old Boston institution often mocked as the Dead Printers Society (and of which I am a past president).
Scott and I were pondering the perennial paradox of the Society of Printers: that very few of us are actually employed in the printing trade. When I joined SP, I was working as a book designer, and part of the group's appeal to me was its unspoken principle that book printing was the only real printing. Everything else was just ephemera, stuff you might collect as a hobby, but not make your life's work. Maybe that's elitist, but elitism doesn't feel so bad when you're on the inside looking out--which I was, being a book designer.
These days, SP's program of lectures leans toward printing history, graphic design, book collecting, and limited editions, and its membership is increasingly composed of scholars and librarians. Books are less something to be made than something to be preserved, like an endangered species.
Which they very well might be. When the guy who spreads ink on his toast proclaimed there are things a computer can't do, he didn't mention books. He talked about ephemera--signs and labels. If he were to give a lecture at SP, he would have a field day with the idea that we still depend on printers to make stuff we're going to throw away--the Happy Birthday sign, the Evian label--but our culture's most important ideas end up in the most ephemeral form of all, tiny electric charges that are only made human-readable by devices that will surely be obsolete by the time Mr. Ink-on-Toast's grandchildren learn to read.
And by regarding the book as a collector's item rather than a commodity, the Society of Printers may be anticipating the future more than clinging to the past.

What matters and what sells

Last month on Good Experience, Bit Literacy author Mark Hurst wrote about the sometimes-painful lessons he’d learned working with mainstream book publishers. “Drop any illusions about spending time with book lovers,” writes Hurst, “this is business.”
“Publishers and bookstores want a book that sells,” he warns. “[I]f your book will sell, it doesn't matter what you're writing about.” Publishers have one-track minds, but so does Hurst. Why doesn’t he flip that argument around? If what you’re writing about matters, it will sell, whether it’s a book or not.
If you read Hurst’s essay as I did, without having read his book or its title, you would have no clue what his book is about: A novel, a weight-loss regimen, a Western Civ. textbook, the results of his research on porphyrins? It doesn't matter what you write about, he seems to say, as long as it ends up being made of paper and ink and prominently displayed in a bookstore.
Why doesn’t this acclaimed Web innovator counsel aspiring authors to say, Here are my ideas. What channel(s) will they sell best in? Traditional book, e-book, web site, TV show, movie, etc.?
Don’t blame the book publisher for putting you through the old-school publishing wringer. That’s what book publishers do. But they’re not an author's only choice anymore.

Paper or plastic

Economists and environmentalists alike shake their heads at our thirst for bottled water. America has the world's safest water on tap, but we spend almost $12 billion a year buying the stuff in bottles.
Most Americans are connected to a grid that pumps fresh, clean water right into our homes, schools, and workplaces. We can use as much as we want, for a fee that's a tiny fraction of the price of bottled water.
So why, whenever we want a drink of water, do we pay for a new container, when we can have the contents piped into our homes 24/7? It's inconceivable! We wouldn't dream of buying anything else that way.
Okay, we buy newspapers that way, but nothing else, just water and newspapers. And magazines. And books.
Hmm, maybe the publishers should call up the bottled-water people and ask them what the trick is.

An accidental tourist bids farewell to Lehigh Press

Graphic Arts Online reports that Visant Corporation will close its Lehigh Press plant in Pennsauken, New Jersey. American print shops close at the rate of about three a day, but every one was a place where real people did real work, and every one has stories to tell. Here's one about Lehigh Press.

When I was head of a textbook design team at D.C. Heath, a favorite part of my job was to go on press OKs. I loved the noise and smell of the presses (I still do), and the urgency and finality of knowing that, after months of planning and revising, in a few days I'd hold a real live book in my hand.
Lehigh Press's specialty was book covers and jackets. They catered to publishers' demand for bells and whistles: Glossy and matte coatings (or both together), embossing, foil stamping, even holographic effects. The man who represented them to D.C. Heath, Bruce Kissell, wasn't a traditional salesman, he was a consultant. He spent as much time with the designers as he did with the print buyers, collaborating on innovative visual effects.
For press OKs at Lehigh, I used to catch an early flight from Boston to Philadelphia, and return the same day. They would send a driver to pick me up at the airport, always the same guy: An old man in a high-mileage stretched-out Lincoln. I would sit in the cavernous passenger area, surrounded by the empty champagne glasses, dried-out corsages, and cigarette butts left by his last night's fare. I'd roll down the glass partition that separated me from the driver's seat, and he'd tell me his troubles, mostly about his family: This one's in jail, that one's husband left her, another one's an alcoholic.
I took that ride one morning in February 1996, and I had my own troubles to tell the limo guy. D.C. Heath had been sold, and about half of us were getting laid off. I had not quite two weeks left.
By the time we got to Pennsauken, it was starting to snow. As usual, the Lehigh folks didn't take long to get the color right where I wanted it, and I called for the limo, hoping I wouldn't miss my return flight. Drivers in the Mid-Atlantic turn helpless with fear when it snows, so even minor storms can cause gridlock. But I underestimated the storm. It wasn't a gridlock-causing storm, it was an airport-closing storm. After a couple of hours on the runway, they took us back to the terminal, no flights 'til tomorrow morning.
I had come down for the day, didn't even have a toothbrush, and all the hotels near the airport were sold out already. Pre-Internet, pre-cell-phone, I was screwed. Grasping at straws, I called a Boston colleague who took frequent business trips to Philly, and he recommended a downtown B&B. I found a shuttle van from the airport, and hoped for the best.
I got more than I hoped for. Despite being a Society Hill landmark dating to 1769, the Thomas Bond House was much cheaper than the airport hotels. I got there in time for the free wine and cheese they serve every evening, and as I prepared to drown my sorrows, another guest offered me her ticket for that night's concert at the Academy of Music, a dozen blocks away. The seat was in a remote balcony, but the snow had kept most of the audience home, so at the first break in the program I parked myself in a cushy orchestra seat to enjoy the rest of the show.
Next morning, the sun came out and I flew home, a happy accidental tourist. Goodbye, Lehigh Press, and thank you for luring me into that bit of serendipity.