Book printing prowess on the first day of Jury Week

Why a jury? Because a group of professionals across industries will judge the submitted samples without knowing who produced them. Only one thing will speak — quality. That is the modus operandi of the PrintWeek Awards.

Day One of PrintWeek Awards 2024 Jury Week was organised for the examination of seven categories. Book Printer of the Year (Education), Book Printer of the Year (Specialty and Trade), Book Printer of the Year (Print on Demand — POD), Brochure and Catalogue Printer of the Year, Fine Art Printer of the Year, Newspaper Printer of the Year, and POS/POP Printer of the Year.

145 samples across these categories from around 40 companies nationwide were laid out for the Jury members to look at. The jury featured seven members — Rajnish Shirsat, Mukund Moghe, Ritesh Uttamchandani, Bhushan Kolte, Ganesh Kanate, Kiran Bhat, and Dibyajyoti Sarma.

Rajnish Shirsat has been in the print and publishing sector for 30 years. Marketing and sales have always been at the core of his work profile. Today, he is a book creator, author of several books, ghostwriter of many books, and leads BookMyStory Publishing.

The high-volume game
Shirsat was asked what impact post-press processes becoming increasingly inline has had on the quality and efficiency of book production. He spoke about a specific sample — Inspired Letters to My Healing Heart. With a run of 15,000, this entry featured manually stitched threads, perforated pages, and peelable stickers to seal the letters once written. 

Shirsat said, “When I saw this sample, I thought the quantity would range from 200 to 400, maximum of 500. 15,000 makes a big difference with this kind of finish. This is going to catch up and open up many doors from an export perspective, which never used to happen. We were very good at doing something in a small quantity, people used to sit and finish off the entire job. When it came to big volume, we were always beaten by China. Not anymore, and that’s what makes me very happy about it.”

When asked what books meant to him, Shirsat said, “Sometimes I feel like blood doesn’t run in my body, it’s probably ink. I’ve spent 30 years in this industry. I always look forward to Jury day, it’s like a pilgrimage for me. I have seen the entire industry evolve right from the days when there was no Internet. Small runs, then digital came in, PDFs. We felt like print would die. Nothing happened. Print is still thriving, and why not? The joy of holding a book in hand, the smell of paper, caressing the pages. A Kindle might hold thousands of titles, but when I carry a book, it makes a completely different impression.”

Printers as solution providers
Mukund Moghe has nearly 25 years of experience in brand building and management, printing and graphic reproduction, event and promotion management, colour management, and media and advertising. He is currently working with Tata Services in corporate branding and marketing.

This year, the main trend he observed was the sameness in coffee table books. He said, “It’s a repetitive kind of work. After all, this is not in the hands of printers. But I can request the print industry to be a solution provider to your client. Don’t just do a copy-paste job with the files you get from the agency. You are the solution provider between your design agency and your client.”

In the coming years, Moghe says that the print industry has to become a solution provider and not a problem creator. He said, “Books shouldn’t just be books. They should also be utility items.” He said that the samples he saw on Day One fit that maxim.

Minimising the margin of error
Ritesh Uttamchandani is an independent photographer based in Mumbai. In 2018, Uttamchandani self-published his first photobook, The Red Cat and Other Stories. His second photobook, Where Are You was released recently.

He said, “I am personally averse to overproduced, loud books. People tend to showcase that as their best work. The production wasn’t screaming at me. Printing and all of those things are 20–30% of the work. It’s the finishing, the cutting, the binding that matters. The ones that I really liked were able to minimise the margin of error. That is also because it is a mix of machine and manual processes.”

Uttamchandani said that he doesn’t particularly like hardcovers. He said, “Purely because, as a book producer myself, my target audience is different, real estate’s target audience is different. They tend to become a little unwieldy, they tend to become deadweights after a while, and the glue, no matter how well you use it, gives away as the weather takes over.”

Notably, Uttamchandani examined the entries with great care. He said, “It’s prevalent across streams — we tend to compensate for bad content with very expensive production. We tend to cloak it with that, and to a slightly refined eye, it shows.”

Bhushan Kolte has been the proprietor of Papyrus since 2018, a company that has a bookstore and publishes independent Marathi literature. He is also a cinema researcher and curator. He said, “Sometimes, what happens is that the design impresses you quite a lot and puts you in awe of the product, but it misleads you in the context of the book.” 

Kolte picked up Kaarten die Geschiedenis Schreven, which looked like an ordinary map at first glance. He said, “Upon further inspection, these are images of old maps, so if I use a magnifying glass, all the details are quite readable. The texture of the paper and other detailing takes you back to that era.”

Functionality as a priority
Ganesh Kanate is currently senior vice president for corporate affairs at Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. Before this, in his journalistic career, he held editorial positions at The Hitavada, DNA, Mid-Day, TV9, Saam TV, and NewsX. 

Kanate said, “In many of the samples I went through, functionality is the key. People are caring more about the utility of the products than the aesthetics.”

Kiran Bhat is an Indian-American author, traveller, and polyglot. He is currently the co-chair of the Environmental Sustainability Subcommittee of the Global Indian Council.

In terms of the functionality of the books, Bhat said, “Each book has a different purpose. There were some books that were extremely clumsy, that were hard to open, very heavy and very big. Some of the books were coffee table books, which you’re meant to read in an upscale parlour in Khar — it fits a different sociological purpose.”

The evolution and integration of post-press
Dibyajyoti Sarma is a publisher at Red River, an independent poetry publishing venture. He said, “There are more players in book printing, and not just in the metro cities, but elsewhere too. Also, printers today are more conscious about the finishing and enhancements of the book, not just the printing. Earlier, printers would invest more in the printing machine and less in finishing. Now, printers are investing more in post-press, and everything is inline.” 

Sarma also noted that this year there were a large number of samples in the fine art and coffee table book categories. He said, “It feels like this particular segment is doing really well.” Another trend that he observed was that Indian book printers are now supplying books to markets all over the world. He said, “A large number of the samples received were produced for foreign markets.”