What are the advantages/disadvantages of traditional offset book printing?
Advantages: At longer run lengths-roughly above 1,500 copies-traditional offset book printing is almost always less expensive per copy than printing books digitally. So in cases where storage costs and the cost of investing in a longer run are balanced by the fact that the books sell relatively fast, it’s a no-brainer to use offset printing. Also, for the highest quality printing of photographs and artwork offset still beats digital printing-though the technology landscape is changing rapidly in this area. Disadvantages: There are hundreds of millions of copies of books printed on offset equipment that never sell and are ultimately destroyed. This is partly a distribution problem, but it is also because offset equipment produces books most efficiently at longer run lengths. The publisher pays not only for the offset printed books that don’t sell, but for storing them, for interest on the money invested in the print run and in the loss of other opportunities to use the cash.
