MERCURY PRINT PRODUCTIONS -- A Digital Thrust

At the same time, however, the company's latest equipment acquisition is expanding the opportunities to rethink how print is used and move some jobs away from offset production, Place adds. Books have been a good case in point, so far.

Using its existing on-demand production capabilities, the organization already was a player in the paperback and case-bound book market. "The majority of the book work we'd been doing had a color cover and black-and-white inside pages," the company president explains. Place believes the iGen3's cost per page, quality and format flexibility will put Mercury in a position to capture significantly more color book work.