Challenges for print buyers 

Rajnish Shirsat: Once upon a time, a majority of books were being produced in China. In the past few years, India has been a solid competition as the export numbers that the PrintWeek editorial team shared with the jury members. The biggest challenge used to be pricing. Now, it is all about finding book suppliers who can deliver as per strict deadlines. And finally, if you look at the work that was displayed during the Jury Day One, the books have lots of complexity and need much embellishment. Some of the Bible books and education books that Indian book print firms are producing are amazing.

Mukund Moghe: In the Indian book market, getting a competitive price is not really a problem. We used to struggle with service support and tech support. Sometimes a jobber or a canvasser provides superior support and turnaround than a big book print firm. The response time has to come down. This is a big challenge that the book manufacturing industry has to address.

Surendra Babu: Books are a good growth market in India. There are textbooks and academic books which are growing. But what the Awards indicated was specialised, POD with beautiful finishes: books that people will buy and pay well for. Meanwhile, the definition of big volumes is changing. This does not mean books are not necessarily being printed. I think many more varieties of books are being produced. And Indian book print firms are producing them with greater efficiency.

Naju Hirani: Education black-and-white work has seen a boost. Kindle and iPads have added to the reading habit during Covid. Also, I see many titles moving from offset print to digital print. I do find it frustrating that people think there are no manufacturing costs involved in digital print though. There are – just look at the massive investments publishers have made in digital infrastructure.

Dibyajyoti Sarma: Obviously digital media is having a big impact on both the book and education sectors. We still don’t seem to have nailed the piracy issue. We seem to be just ignoring it, because it’s not a problem right now. Sometimes, we feel that we haven’t learned the lessons from the music industry. Then there are things like Amazon’s ‘lending library’ or what Repro India is doing. I feel this is going to impact us. 

Challenges for the industry 

Rajnish Shirsat: In many ways, the book-making industry has challenges from all directions. For example, there’s the problem of having to produce editions in all sorts of different formats. Things need to get standardised. For this the textbook bureaus in all the states in India have to create a SOP. We can do it, but someone has to bell the cat.

Dibyajyoti Sarma: Print is the only way to reach out to the poor girl students across India who are being deprived of education. Whatever internet education and their marketing teams say in their ads, parents realise this.

Mukund Moghe: I can see that, and I also think it will represent a serious opportunity when our smartphones get much more smarter and penetrate a larger group of consumers. AI is a game-changer for the book industry. PrintWeek should host education workshops for the book fraternity.

Surendra Babu: Instability in the market. Especially when you’re placing work contractually and you’re sometimes having to second-guess which horse to back and if they are still going to be there in a few years. In short, there’s probably not as much visibility as we’d like; there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors when it comes to the numbers.

Immediate hurdles

Rajnish Shirsat: Availability of paper. We’ve lost a lot of historic names, where suppliers have either gone out of business or have been bought. Plus there is the volatility. And that is all quite worrying.

Sudha Ganapathi: Inefficiencies in the system. Either it is wrong moves in terms of technology strategies or not communicating enough to the creators and designers. From what I am hearing from fellow jury members around this table, it seems there are steps being taken in terms of increasing efficiency and productivity. 

Mukund Moghe: As buyers, it’s in our interests that the book print firm is capable of delivering the services that we need. We have been spoiled for a number of years by the prices offered in the market and enjoyed very competitive rates. I’m old enough to remember a time when Tata used to produce lakhs of annual reports in multiple centres. From the book samples I saw at the PrintWeek Awards, there is a huge shift from that decade. There are lots of changes.

Naju Hirani: I completely agree. Yes, the world is changing, but print still has an important role and I sometimes think that we publishers forget that.

Praful Akali: We’re still learning. Everyone’s in a rush to develop apps, but there’s still no effective advertising model in many instances. The print advertising model does work.

Surendra Babu: What still excites you about working in print is the people. Yes, there are challenges, but it’s certainly never boring. Don’t forget, the book print firms produce a product that is completely different every week or every month and it’s a product that people really connect with.

Praful Akali: Books are creative and inspiring and we get to do it often. The finishing and binding to develop a product is superb. And the amazing thing is, once one book is finished, the book print firm starts all over again and works hard to make the next even better than the last. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Sudha Ganapathi: Yes, books are the best!

Praful Akali: I concur.

On the first day of Jury Week, Jury members Dibyajyoti Sarma; Mukund Moghe; Naju Hirani; Praful Akali; Rajnish Shirsat; Sudha Ganapathi and Surendra Babu judged the samples submitted in seven categories. 

These included Book Printer of the Year (Education); Book Printer of the Year (Specialty and Trade); Book Printer of the Year (Print on Demand - POD); Brochure & Catalogue Printer of the Year; Newspaper Printer of the Year; and POS/POP Printer of the Year.