Future of books to be highlighted at Romancing Print

Speaking to PrintWeek India before the event, Subhasis Ganguli, the vice president (Production & Content Management) of Penguin Books India said, "The industry needs to innovate out of sheer necessity. We know 'necessity is the mother of invention', it is always a good time to innovate to progress in the way of life. It is more relevant in today's scenario where the input costs are going up but the selling prices need to come down. Even if the selling prices goes up to some extent, still it is invaluable to innovate to improve profitability, cut down wastage and standardise process to cut down soft cost. In other word, we all need to improve our efficacy."  

Ganguly who had spoken to a group of printers in Kerala during Welbound's Open House said, "In print publishing, efficacy means, change management, improve efficiency in the system and cost and to make the stock available Just in Time. This involves a close coordination and understanding of the total supply chain process and not to look at print buying in silos. That again can be reduced by a huge load through change management."

Ganguly is an advocate of "change management" which means managing the change. He said, "We need to change ourselves with time. Be it a change of our approach towards the job, Change of our attitude, change in understanding and most importantly change in relationship and to pay respect to each other. We need to be aware and more concern to control our wastage, standardise process to cut down unnecessary expenditure, invest in new technology to cut down cost and to improve efficiency."

Ganguly felt, "Today, 'Cost is the King', and we need to look in innovative way toward that. New implementation of new technology needs money, so is the new technology. It also needs adequate training and proper planning to get the best out of it. This is where the role of standardisation of process, workflow and inputs, plays a crucial part." 

Ganguly had special advice for the print fraternity when he said, "Today, the main challenge to the print buyers are cost and turn-around time (TAT). It is also important to bring down TAT to achieve Just in Time approach. Hence, it is important to look at the process and to innovate how we could bring down TAT. PUR binding and digital printing could be the answer to that. It is important to take a holistic view to the total process, and not a peace-meal calculation in silos. These innovations also could come with additional benefit, which need to be marketed to the print buyer to
make them aware of the outcome, by which they could be benefited."

Romancing Books is part of the full day session on 15 January at the Hotel Ashok in Delhi wherein there are knowledge sessions; all themed "romancing". Satish Malhotra, the chairman of Romancing Print said, "We are happy to announce the keynote address by the motivational expert, Shiv Khera who says “Winners don’t do different things, they do them differently”.