Issues facing the publishing industry (in Chinese)

Second, the future of the printing market
In the past 10 years in the technical development of gravure printing and peace printing, the greatest debate has been about how much to replace ordinary plain printing in the future. Although the methods for making lithography are ordinary UV exposure, optical CTP, and discrete images. But looking at the future of various digital presses, they are trying to completely replace the typographical machine.
1. Prepress technology
Prepress technology is the basis of platemaking and printing methods. It is divided into optical exposure platemaking technology and non-optical exposure platemaking technology.
The current optical exposure platemaking technology mainly includes thermal exposure and ultraviolet exposure. Today, the cost of CTP plates is higher than that of ordinary UV plates. The cost of the plate printing apparatus is higher than that of the UV exposure recording apparatus, but beyond the life of the plate recording apparatus, the material cost for the apparatus will obviously exceed the cost of the apparatus. In addition, the semiconductor industry adopts a new light wave method to adjust the laser light, and is preparing to produce a plate printing apparatus that exposes a cheap UV laser energy on a cheap general plate. In addition to the technological competition, the marketing war is also underway. As long as one of them succeeds, it marks the end of the game of the CTP.
Non-optical exposure platemaking technology can not completely rule out other exposure techniques in the prepress area, such as laser ablation and inkjet deposition. Although inkjet technology limits the resolution of the image, it is sufficient for many applications, and the inkjet printing device is very inexpensive and can gradually increase the range of applications. Of course, to achieve the same goal, the widely used digital printing technology will be better.
2. Digital printing machine
Today's digital printers mostly use a toner-based printing method, which has been able to form the same image for each sheet that passes through the digital printer. Digital press suppliers such as Xerox DocuTech have replaced the typographic machine for a large number of monochromatic markets, and multicolor digital presses such as HP-Indigo, NexPress, Xerox and Xeikon are also starting to hit the color lithography market. However, toner-based digital printers suffer from problems when the number of prints exceeds several hundred pages per minute, and the cost of consumables, such as toner and OPC drums, is difficult to compete with the offset printing inks.
In the long run, inkjet technology may have greater market influence than toner-based technology, but this technology is still not strong enough in the field of plain printing. Scitex's inkjet-type commercial color digital printers were first put into the denomination. The inkjet machines gradually became faster and more economical than typographers. However, the quality of the inkjet printers was greatly different from that of the plain printers. The promotion of the machine. However, inkjet high-speed printing presses will soon be introduced, and the quality of printed products will be greatly improved, and the price will start to decline to the user's expectations. When a reasonable digital press is selected after 5 to 10 years, it will be found that ink jet technology is not the mainstream market, but will choose the unique technology of electro-condensation imaging technology that can associate unique pages with quality, speed, and cost. But this technique needs to be proven in practice.
3. Variable data printing
Variable data printing is the technology people have been expecting for the past 10 years. But in fact this “recruitment application” opened the market for digital color printers, but the use of digital printers to print variable data is increasingly a success of some personal applications.
Although digital printing presses are now available, and PPML and related standards have been developed, and the incompatibilities between output devices have gradually been resolved, digital press applications are not widely used, not because of the lack of technology, but because of their existence. There is a lack of suitable databases and appropriate technical equipment within an organization. The result is that most of the databases designed for other applications are not suitable for variable data printing. For example, when data is imported, inconsistencies such as capital letters or address information are used for name import, especially when information from two databases is mixed to generate matching results. Problems arise when a print-based document is used.
Even if the user has a good database, to a certain extent, generating a variable data job requires four different capabilities, namely: (1) need to know the job process well; (2) consider the appropriate layout Variables (graphics design); (3) a good understanding of how to extract the required records and fields from the database; and (4) familiarity with the process of combining all of these on a digital press. As a result, the integration of these techniques has become a major challenge for digital printing, especially in the context of print shops, advertising agencies and client companies.
Currently, most of the variable data products in the market are limited to the product part. There is no direct reference to these four areas. The system that really involves all these four areas may be a multi-user, multi-site cooperative system. The challenge now is how to integrate them productively.
4. Imprinted image
Abrasive plates have potential value in the area of ​​untreated imprinted images. Abrasive plates have the same resolution as ordinary plates. However, the total cost of materials, process chemicals, disposal waste, and time can be lower than the cost of common plates. . The latest ablative version produced by PressteK can print up to 100,000 impressions. However, in fact, the user is concerned about the duration of the operation of the machine. The longer the machine is running, the lower the importance of the cost of the plate. The cost of media is only important in the short-term operation. For short-term operation of the machine, competitive technologies such as Agfa's thermosensitive photosensitive coating materials are more conducive to cost reduction. There is no plate with high capacity in the current plate with embossed images, and the price of the plate is particularly difficult to locate. Therefore, in the long run, it is difficult to see how the price of the plates produced at birth will make future technologies more effective.
5. Network-based workflow changes
A few years ago, professional printing, including commercial publishing, and communication with foreign companies shifted the focus of work flow from printing to web-based. This shift took place at different times and at different stages. This shift has occurred in most reference books such as encyclopedias, dictionaries and scientific documents. These content publishers have introduced systems to create, manage, and distribute content, and have transformed into SGML or XML formats. Their intrinsic production process and business operation model has changed from a business model based on print to a model supplemented by electronic products. This change is driven by two factors: online media that can benefit businesses, and SGML or XML workflows that separate the content and forms that are needed. The same changes are taking place in newspapers, magazines and product samples, but only slightly slower. For advertising-driven newspapers and magazines, resistance comes from the combination of immature technology and unpredictable business models.
The newspaper has become a necessity due to the relationship between printing and networking with customers, and has introduced or established a newspaper system based on an XML database for editing and production environment. It also considers the use of printing paper and cooperation websites. surroundings. Once the newspapers have adequate technical support, the newspapers will be most concerned about the operation of the company rather than content management. In today's market, the magazine system still lags behind the newspaper system. The magazine system is still stuck in the workflow of streamlined printing to the network (from printing to database to network). Although many magazines have already got rid of the traditional concept of division of labor, due to the fact that magazine contents are mostly close-ups and less news, it is difficult for current magazine companies to implement cross-media solutions.
Books and periodicals, especially commercial publications, place great emphasis on converting printed matter into electronic products. But so far, there has been almost no interest in the transformation of basic products and workflows that have been formed over the past few centuries. Since at the appropriate time, although technology can be transformed into a workflow based on electronic products, the profit brought to them is extremely small, so there is almost no reason for books publishing to change the existing business model.
This change in business model is different from market cooperation. Most people in the market believe that "network-based printing is a by-product," but from a business perspective, the process of combining the two is very difficult, just like Xpress for typography. Software, web publishing with Dreamweaver software is difficult to use the same composition of the same composition material. Therefore, only when the technology is relatively complete can it lead to a major breakthrough in the production process of the company. (To be continued)