Impact of Desktop Publishing on Printing

Interesting article about how the increase in desktop publishing has affected the printing industry — especially prepress jobs:

Desktop Publishing's Legacy: 230,000 Fewer Commercial Printing Workers, and An Explosion in Content Creation Workers

As someone who started working in publishing at the tail end of the "camera ready" era and starting into the digital era, it is interesting to see some of these numbers. Ten years ago you had to go to prepress houses to prepare files for press, pay an incredible amount of money to have hi-resolutions scans done, ship bluelines overnight to meet deadlines, and pay large prep costs for plating jobs. Now, most of that can be done at a home office and loaded directly to the printer without leaving the seat of your chair.

The Problem With the Publishing Industry

Dallas News Commentary
I came across this commentary and found it very interesting.

The barriers to entry in the book business get lower each year. There are thousands of independent publishers and even more self-publishers. These players will soon have the same access to readers as major publishers do, once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream.

When that happens, publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively. Those who publish generic books for expedient purposes will face new competitors. Like the music companies, some of those publishers may shrink or die.

Although I do have to disagree with this point he makes:

Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it's hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year.

True, there are many more options, but the majority of kids today have grown up on Harry Potter, have seen the resurgence of the Lord of the Rings, and the success of the Eragon books. Having grown up being a voracious reader myself and still being a book buying nerd in my mid-30s, I think the next generation of readers will still enjoy the satisfaction of reading a printed book.