Digital Finishing — Where to Draw the Line?

Fred Daubert is president of Book1One in Rochester, NY, which caters to printers and publishers that need digitally produced books. As a division of traditional trade binder The Riverside Group, it produces hard and soft cover books in short runs—without having its own digital press.

“About three years ago, we (as The Riverside Group) were turning digital book work away left and right,” Daubert recounts. “People would come in and want us to bind 100 books. I’d tell them, ‘You’ve got to send me 50 extra sets.’ They would respond, ‘We can’t give you that kind of spoilage on this work.’ In the digital book market, if you ask for an extra completed book block you’re talking $30 to $40 of added cost.