Digital Prepress--The Need to Diversify

Unfortunately, the industry has generally underestimated the more important dimension: time. In simplest terms, the time value of digital printing refers to its ability to provide up-to-date information to the consumer without delay. For example, investment brokerage firms place high value on the delivery speed for marketing materials, prospectuses and research reports to prospective customers, whose propensity to buy a particular investment has been shown to have a lifetime of only a few days. On the other hand, for many years, the book publishing industry placed little real value on speed of delivery to the consumer. Delivery times for books not carried in retail stock averaged three weeks. Today's Internet book retailing is raising consumers' expectations for immediate delivery of a vast selection of titles—and is also raising the value of digital printing.