Aug. 11, 2023
As a printing house, RX packaging suggests that publishing houses should not only look at the cost above the iceberg, that is, they should not only care about the printing cost, but should pay more attention to the hidden cost. They should know how much it costs to print a book, How much money can you make in the end. Therefore, under the new print-on-demand business model, digital printing can help publishers eliminate hidden costs and achieve zero inventory of books.
Traditional publishing
What is the status quo of my country's publishing industry today? In the upstream there are authors and publishing houses with copyrights, who are also the owners of book numbers and copyrights; in the midstream are printing factories, which do printing and processing, and many printing factories earn printing processing fees; downstream are bookstores, For example, Xinhua Bookstore, etc., there are also private booksellers, and online merchants. However, the upper, middle and lower reaches of the entire Chinese publishing industry have not yet integrated into a value chain.
According to statistics, 70% of the books in my country will be out of print after the first edition, and there will be no second edition. Because most publishing houses still use traditional printing methods, the first thing they face is the problem of batch size, which can only be done in large batches, and publishing houses with small batches dare not print anymore.
Taking the sales of the publishing industry in 2012 as an example, the inventory of the publishing industry in 2012 was more than 10 billion yuan more than the sales. This is a problem that publishing houses need to solve urgently, and it is a pain for publishing houses and the publishing industry.
If the inventory of books is likened to an iceberg. What floats on the water, we regard it as an explicit cost, that is, how much a book needs to be printed by the publishing house, and how much money is given to the author, which is what the publishing house knows best. In addition, there are hidden costs, which are below the surface. Hidden costs include inventory costs, fixed costs, occupied capital costs, scrap costs, and goods movement costs, and return costs if they cannot be sold. These costs are difficult for publishers to estimate before publishing a book.
Hidden costs are very scary, occupying a lot of funds, books cannot be sold, and facing the possibility of scrapping, according to statistics, the average scrapping rate of each book is between 20% and 30%.
Future publishing
The future publishing industry is digital printing publishing industry. Usually, it is difficult for publishing houses and publishers to predict the sales volume of a book exactly, and how much a book needs to be printed. At this time, digital printing can provide a more economical method - reducing inventory in small batches and multiple batches, or even Can be zero stock. This is the charm of digital printing.
Through analysis, we concluded that traditional printing is more suitable for books with more than 3,000 books, while digital printing is more suitable for books with less than 2,000 books. When a new book is released, you can choose to use digital printing to print a small batch of the first edition. When the book is released to the market, if the sales volume is good, it can be converted to the second edition and printed in the traditional way. If the sales volume is not good, it will be returned to digital printing. Bulk printing. At this time, digital printing complements traditional printing.
At the same time, we compared the cost of digital printing and traditional printing. In terms of explicit costs, traditional printing has an advantage when the printing quantity is above 3,000, but when it is less than 2,000, digital printing is more advantageous; in terms of hidden costs, traditional printing inventory costs are relatively high, and digital printing inventory costs are relatively high. Very low, or even none; In terms of capital, traditional printing capital costs are relatively high, digital printing capital costs are low, or even none; in terms of return costs, traditional printing is relatively high, digital printing return costs are low, or even no returns; in logistics In terms of cost, traditional printing is relatively high, and there are some logistics and returns. In short, digital printing is basically absent in the whole hidden cost section.
