Printers who let their hostility get the best of them are fools,

because printers who are likely to survive this recession and move successfully forward must find ways to reinvent their relationships with Print Brokers. Brokers hold the key to doubling or tripling your business without creating additional expense. The problem is that most printers don’t know what to do with print brokers. They aren’t part of the sales team and they aren’t customers either. What are they? Any attempt to pigeon hole them into either role will end in failure and frustration.

The first thing to do is embrace brokers and stop kicking them in the teeth.  I know this may not make sense to you. Some of you are going to accuse me of overreacting, after all your company doesn’t mistreat brokers — right? Some will say I’m whining, and some won’t consider the issue of print brokers at all. There are a lot of misguided printers who staunchly refuse to work with brokers. That might have been okay in the past, but it won’t serve you well in the future. You can’t afford to turn your back on sources of instant new business.

Haven’t you noticed how tough times are? Printing, particularly offset printing, has been besieged on all sides. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how the pigheaded, self-serving banking industry has hurt all of us. Have you tried to get a loan lately? Nor do I have to explain about the impact of digital printing, foreign competition, and the Internet. You already know about these things. You are experiencing unprecedented cash flow problems and shrinking markets. Even your best customers have cut back with no real promise that they will ever be at former levels again.

I hear moaning from the Industry that good sales representatives are hard to find and that your sales people keep pressing for ever lower prices to make them competitive. You get upset and believe that they aren’t really trying. A really good sales rep can sell even under the most adverse circumstances — right? If you truly believe that why don’t you put on your salesman’s hat and find out for yourself? Maybe you did. Maybe you took a day, or a week, and went into the field. Maybe you proved to yourself that it isn’t so bad, but let me tell you, selling in this economy is like fighting an uphill battle day-after-day-after-day. It can wear down even the heartiest rep. Your sales team, is running on fumes, and another sales meeting, another motivational talk, and another seminar isn’t going to dramatically change anything.

What can you do? I would like you to take a moment, if you will, and consider re-vitalizing your sales efforts with the help of Print Brokers. Why Print Brokers, because they are FREE! Printers don’t have to house them, pay salaries, benefits, or reimbursements. That should be incentive enough. FREE, FREE, FREE — what’s better than that?

The problem is that most printers I’ve talked to either barely tolerate brokers, or despise them. Why? I think there are five main reasons for this:

1. Print Brokers own their own customer list. The printer doesn’t. Suppose a house sales rep brings in an account, since they were working on the company dime the customer technically belongs to the company. This isn’t true with brokers. In fact if you go after the broker’s customer it can lead to a nasty fight.
2. Print Brokers are legally a middle man. Printers fume if the broker can’t pay them because the customer didn’t pay the bill. On the other hand, how can you hold the broker responsible when they don’t receive the product? You don’t punish your in-house sales team like this. You must find a compromise. How difficult can it be to secure your interests in transactions without leaning on the party who is least likely to have the means to pay you? Think about it.
3. Print Brokers can take the print jobs to someone else if they want. Usually they move things around to save money, time, or be more convenient, but they don’t even have to have a reason, they can just do it.
4. Print Brokers are employed by their customers — not the printer. In the event of a disagreement the printer has little leverage over the broker. The broker knows which side his bread is buttered on  and is most likely to defend the customer’s point of view over the printer’s.
5. Print Brokers are not constrained by territories. Printers often feel threatened by brokers because they see their own customers as potentially vulnerable to the broker. Sales reps especially are very protective and guard, as they should, from any possible threat.

In my next post I will give printers some ideas that will allow them to work around the conflicts and make better broker relationships which will benefit both printer and print broker.

I envy the printers for one thing in particular, they are updated regularly by paper merchant reps who call on them with the latest developments, updates, and changes. I get my information either second hand or by attending seminars and showings hosted by the merchants. In the last two weeks I attended a seminar on preparing art files for printing, direct mail, and the danger of the opt-out initiative, and digital printing advancements. I never know what a customer is going to ask of me and I have to be prepared.

Yesterday, Sappi paper sent Daniel Dejan, their North American ETC Print/Creative Manager to town to speak about graphic design and file prep. I thanked Daniel for his presentation, but didn’t thank him enough. You see the printers depend on the artists and graphic designers to keep the presses rolling. The graphic designers need the printers to produce their products. But to hear them talk about each other, you’d think there is a war going on. The printers say that graphic designers don’t even try to prepare their files correctly, that they think because something looks right on the screen it will print right. Designers on the other hand, think that the printers are screwing up their files, and if they just knew what they were doing the jobs would all run smoothly.

Stop the bickering. Mr. Dejan framed the problem as having its roots primarily in the graphic programs and in the designers failure to take the finishing steps necessary to make sure their files are correct.

I can tell you from my personal experience that computer design has completely overhauled the printing industry. When the first design programs were introduced, they created more problems than they solved. Over the years we have seen definite improvements. The programs are much better but still far from perfect. Could they get even better? Yes. Are they striving to implement technology that would fix the disconnect between printer and graphic artist? Not really. Daniel says that he has recommended changes that are possible, but are shrugged off as being too expensive, or time consuming, and aren’t worth doing. Millions of dollars every year are wasted in printer and designer time because the needed tweaks aren’t happening. Printers and designers need to get together and insist that the software is improved. Maybe working on changes that would throw up red flags when art is incomplete or wrong isn’t sexy, but it would go along way to reducing wasted hours and angry phone calls.

“The single most important thing a designer can do to communicate the job to the printer,” according to Daniel, “is to provide a hard-copy dummy. Herein lies the rub, most files are now emailed to the printer or go by way of ftp. It used to be that the print rep picked up the art and delivered it to the printer. Hard-copy dummies were more common then. We have gotten away from them today, but they are still critical to successful communication. I hate to say it, but it seems to me that we need to take a step backward and have the print reps pick up the disk and hard-copy dummy to take back to the shop. We’ve lost an important communication opportunity along the way.

The second most important task for the designer is to pre-flight their own files. A good pre-flight program provides information about problem spots like low-res photos, but also tosses all the false starts and junk that accumulate as the design is developing. It’s like delivering a finished statue without cleaning it up or sweeping the debris around it. It’s not just ugly; it confuses the rip and leads to wrong fonts being selected, and other problems.

Every printer in the world would love for Daniel Dejan of Sappi to personally instruct the graphic designers, but that isn’t possible. What is possible is that the word gets out about dummies, and pre-flights and most of the problems would be resolved early.

As for Adobe and the others, come on, give us a break. Listen to Daniel, take his advice, and endow your programs with the tweaks needed to help stop the war.

Sappi’s website is www.sappi.com. If you would like to discuss other design-print problems with Daniel, his company email is daniel.dejan@sappi.com.

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First what is POD? This is really confusing. There are iPod’s for music, pod casts for recording, pea pods, pod people from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Printing on Demand (pod).

Since I’m a print broker and this blog concerns itself with printing, publishing, and [other] observations you could guess that the pod I’m concerned about is Printing on Demand. By the way, that’s a darned good phrase. Whoever came up with it should write political slogans, you know, the kind of things that sound good but have no real substance. After all, if you wanted something printed why not have it done on demand?

I DEMAND PRINTING NOW!

“My good sir, I demand my printing.” Wha? What does it mean? The phrase by itself is meaningless, but it has impact. It lets the customer feel that they are in charge by being able to demand it. How often if life do we get to demand anything? Demands usually cause trouble, but here’s the printer giving you permission to DEMAND something. That’s refreshing, don’t you think?

First, printing on demand is a misnomer. It is not a printing method at all. The method is called digital. Think of POD like the term quick print. Quick printing is offset printing utilizing faster turnarounds, smaller runs, and cheaper methods, like using paper plates instead of metal. There is no printing process called Quick Print. And there isn’t a printing press called an “on demand.”

Digital printing burst onto the printing scene just a few years ago. The computer industry spawned it, and in fact, the printing you do on your office laser jet is digital printing. The difference between the commercial digital “press” and your office printer boils down primarily to speed and sophistication.

So what’s the big deal? Oh my friend, it is a very big deal because Printing on Demand is revolutionizing the field of publishing. Until it came around, it wasn’t economically feasible to print just a few books. To prepare an offset press for printing requires several steps that we call “make-ready” in the biz. The time and materials, such as plates,  and file prep, have front-end costs. With POD, many of those front-end costs don’t exist. if your electronic file is right, the setup is virtually done. Now is the beginning of the golden age of short-run publishing.

If the price is better why isn’t all printing POD? Because, it isn’t always better. For all the hoopla, POD has a serious weakness. It is great at micro print runs, like quantities between one and five-hundred, but can’t keep up with offset printing at around one-thousand. If you wish to print say 2,000 books, offset printing will offer a much better price, but if you only want 50, POD beats offset, hands down.

What’s the future of Printing on Demand? Who knows? I suspect that someone, somewhere soon will figure out a way to make digital printing more economical for longer runs and offset presses will quickly disappear like dinosaurs. That day isn’t here yet. For the time being I recommend digital printing for short runs and offset printing for larger.  Here’s a pretty simple guide: 500 or less = digital, 1,000 or more = offset, between 500 and 1,000, get a bid.

P.S. If you have self-published a book and want to learn how to totally master the power of Internet marketing check out The Author Platform.

I, Bill Ruesch, have a confession to make. Although I’ve been in and around printing for some 35 years, book publishing is comparably new to me. You see, I did something that most Americans (somewhere around 80% wish they would do) I wrote a book. Actually I wrote four, one non-fiction, two poetry, and a novel, but that is beside the point. My novel would be my break through book. It  is a children’s fantasy story set in the fictional 1950′s small Florida town of Burns. It’s called The Whistlin’ Salamander. The thing is, I didn’t know what to do next.

Does that seem odd to you? I don’t mean to imply that I don’t know how to get a book printed. I could do that in my sleep. What I didn’t know was how to get it published. So, I turned to the Internet and bought several books on the subject.  I found tons of information on the business from landing an agent, to wooing a publisher. Publishers, for the most part, I was advised, won’t even look at a manuscript that hasn’t been presented by an agent, so I tried, and tried, to find an agent.

I learned about query letters. I came up with what I believed was a dandy, and made sure it was letter perfect. Agents, I read, have zero tolerance for grammar or spelling errors. I found out that different agents required different numbers of pages to sample your manuscript, and that I had to scrupulously follow every instruction or risk immediate rejection. I was very certain that they would love my letter and the submitted pages would be hailed. In my daydreams agents competed to sign me. That was the fantasy. The reality–not so much. Not only didn’t anyone bite, they didn’t even nibble.

What next, I thought?

Aha! An old friend Karen Christoffersen, I recalled, had worked with Richard Paul Evans author of the best-selling Christmas Box. Maybe Karen could help me. I called Karen and she told me that they were working on a program to teach self-publishers everything they needed to know through a practical hands-on method. At the completion, authors would receive fifty copies of their bookstore-worthy book printed, designed, edited, and proofread. That sounded like a good idea, but I already knew how to get all of the production things done. What I needed to know was how to sell my book. The great-agent-chase convinced me that traditional publishing wasn’t ready for me yet.

Karen introduced me to Phil Davis the owner of ZDocs a digital printing company specializing in short-run books. Phil, being the savvy entrepreneur that he is, had created a course to teach authors how to use the Internet to establish or increase credibility, and to sell books. He named the course T.A.P.The Author Platform. I told Phil about my quandary and he gracefully allowed me to study TAP with the proviso that I would report back to him anything I didn’t understand. Hey, I could do that. Through The Author Platform I learned the importance of creating a blog. Viola, that’s what you are reading now. I learned about social networking and you can find me on Facebook , Linkedin and Twitter, I found out that through social networking you can reach thousands of people with your sales message in less time than it takes for one person to walk into a bookstore, pickup your book, and look at the jacket.

I’ve been practicing the principles Phil teaches in TAP.  I now know that self-promotional activities are challenging. They take time, they take energy, and they require all of your creativity. How well does it work? In just a few months I’ve become connected with amazing people all over the world that I could never have met in 10 lifetimes otherwise. My network gets stronger everyday. The more I learn the more I realize there must be thousands of people in the same boat as I was, authors stuck  somewhere along the path between writing a book to successfully selling it. My need became the incentive to develop The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors. You can read the manifesto, which is just a fancy way of saying vision and purpose by clicking here.

I’ve heard sad stories of garages full of self-published books that don’t sell because the authors don’t know what to do once they have them. I would heartily recommend The Author Platform as an excellent way to begin. It costs a little money, but compared to the cost of just storing unsold books, it’s a pittance. Knowledge truly is powerful.

It’s not “the economy, stupid” it’s the market. Maybe the phrase should be it’s the market, stupid. Printing companies have been dropping like autumn leaves with no immediate end in sight. According to the NAPL, the future is looking “dim” (my word, not theirs). They expect that a minimum of 4,000 printers to as many as 10,000 will shut down over the next 10 years. Over the last 4 years we saw a decline of 4,800 plants with approximately 150,000 employees. Since 1994 we experienced a loss of over 11,000 plants.

What does all of this mean? It means that the current state of the economy, while rough, isn’t the real reason for the decline in the industry. That’s why I say it’s the market, stupid! Thanks to the Internet,the methods we have used in the past to communicate with one another are withering away. For example:

Newspapers: Major metropolitan newspapers have hit very hard times. Some have already closed shop and many more are about to. It doesn’t take a very clear crystal ball to see that those that continue to exist will be very different from the newspapers of yesteryear. Why? Craig’s List, and other free online classified services eroded the base revenues for the papers. Who would pay for something they can get free, and that has larger reach? Also, every newspaper now publishes their content online. You can do more on a web page than a print page–it’s more flexible. For example you can beef up your story with graphics and movies  on a web page. It’s also timely. Hot news can be displayed on the website within minutes, instead of waiting hours for the next edition to hit the streets. We have no patience.

Magazines: Reuters reports that, “Newsstand and retail sales of U.S. magazines fell 11 percent in the second half of 2008, with celebrity and women’s titles taking a hit as supermarket and drugstore shoppers cut back on spending.” Furthermore, “Fifty percent of all magazines are sold in supermarkets, and obviously those types of places took a major hit.” If the decline in single copy magazine sales is because of the economy, will we see a rebound when the recession ends? And more importantly, when will it end? Again looking through my rather murky crystal ball, I predict many titles disappearing, and those standing will see sharp decreases in readership. Printers relying on magazine printing will be hard hit.

Books: Booksellers report decreases, with the exception of Amazon Media who appears to be up. Amazon is invested deeply in electronics. The Kindle reader entirely eliminates the need for printing. Amazon has also benefited from third party sales (see my For Your Consideration Page on this blog). It is estimated that 1 in 3 books sold at Amazon is actually sold by a third party. Smarter marketing is bringing them more business. Borders reported a loss and announced they are trying to sell their international operations and may sell the whole chain.

Direct Mail Marketing: I was once told by Peter Harrison, a direct marketing expert who is now running Affiliate Crew an internet company, that “Everything that goes in the mail must be printed.” What happens when mail volume goes down? Think about it, banks and other financial organizations have gone paperless. You don’t mail in your bills anymore, you authorize payment on-line. Envelope printers have suffered because of this. Forms printers have also felt the effects. What about other direct mail campaigns? The US Postal Service keeps increasing rates as more and more direct mail companies discover other marketing avenues. The ones left in the game will  bear ever heavier a postage burdens. Once the cost of postage reaches the proverbial camel’s back, the direct mail business will be through. Kaput. What will the post office have to do then, personal letters? Even with my cloudy crystal ball it’s as easy as seeing the housing boom collapse. Really, who didn’t see it coming with overinflated prices, and interest rates at 1%?

Catalogs: I had trouble finding some figures for catalog printing, but I can tell you that the catalogs are pushing web sales more and more. If you think about it they face similar challenges to newspapers. You can just do more on-line to show off your product than you can in print. Why not video the item, particularly clothing, so you can see front, back, and side? Once holographic technology is here the public will insist on 3 dimensional views. It’s just around the corner.

Wedding Invitations & Announcements: I’ll admit that invitations and announcements have never accounted for a big slice of the printing pie, but those printers specializing in them have been hit hard. Why? It’s because people have access to paper options, graphic design programs, and digital printing. They create their own invitations with their own style and creativity.

NAPL also reports that only [are the] larger plants growing in number. Those printers without deep pockets will be swallowed by the others. It’s the law of the jungle. The downside is that more print industry employees will find themselves unemployed. What are their options in the new economy?

Like the dawning of the Industrial Age big changes are happening, but at a much faster pace. What will it be like when clouds in my dirty crystal ball clear? I just don’t know–do you?