Press Minding - All the news that’s fit for print

September 2008 - Posts

• Publish and be damned

  The Times and The Guardian report today that police arrested three men on suspicion of plotting to murder the publisher of a controversial novel in a petrol bomb attack. Martin Rynja is to publish Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina which reportedly contains a sex scene between Mohammed and his wife A'isha under his company Gibson Square Publishing. The book was dropped by Random House earlier this year because the company was concerned it might anger muslims. Turned out it was right. I don't know who has been contracted to print the book, but given what has befallen the publisher, it would most likely be unwise to publish the name here in any case. However, the episode does pose questions for print-on-demand publishers. Given the direct model in operation - author uploads the book - buyer buys it - then are they effectively acting as publisher but with little or no vetting of what it is they actually publish? This thorny issue has had a legal precedent already set in the US in terms of defamation in Sandler v. Calcagni. I'll let Mark Glaser precis it (from his Media Shift blog) "The case started with a dispute between two high school cheerleaders over (what else?) a boy. According to the court’s opinion, one of the cheerleaders, Calcagni, and some of her friends harassed Sandler with religious epithets. Eventually, Calcagni was convicted of a hate crime for allegedly spray-painting a swastika near Sandler’s home. "Calcagni’s parents decided to tell their side of the story with a tell-all book about the incident. They printed the book through BookSurge, and purchased several hundred copies, which they distributed to friends, family and local bookstores. Several other parties also purchased copies of the book online. "Not surprisingly, Sandler sued Calcagni, her parents, the freelancer and BookSurge. BookSurge made a motion to dismiss the claims against it, arguing that it should not be held liable as a publisher for purposes of defamation law." The court found that Amazon's BookSurge was not liable. Why? Because it had had little involvement with the author or the content of the book and so could not be considered publisher. But it still leaves POD companies between a rock and a hard place. You either don't get involved at all and run the risk of arson attacks and who knows what else depending on what it is you are printing (remember, you DON'T know what it is - it could be anything), but in a (US) court not be held liable as publisher. Or vet what you print but face all the legal responsibilities of being a publisher. I'm not sure I have an answer for that.        Posted Sep 29 2008, 02:44 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments Filed under: BookSurge, defamation, print on demand

• Augmenting print

  First off, I hold my hands up to the fact that what follows is actually something Richard Romano picked up on his blog. It's from the Scientific American which features an article on augmented reality.  The article talks about how print media can be embedded with design cues that when viewed through a device such as the camera of a mobile phone, would trigger an event, such as running a video clip, or downloading other content from the web. The technology has been applied to children's books by New York-based Media Power. The printed book comes alive when viewed through a mobile phone with three-dimensional animated characters that walk and talk their way through the pages. Augmented reality like this could have all sorts of applications for print media, especially where it involves the ubiquitous mobile phone. Print ads could also use web assets so that an advertisement for a car, for example, could also offer the viewer a video of it in action and a three-dimensional view. It could also be used in transpromo in a similar way, or could make a document more secure, so that certain information would only be revealed when a phone with a particular SIM was used to view it. Direct mail could use it to push viewers directly to a personalised URL rather than hope they will turn on a computer and key in a web address, or to personalise non-personalised adverts (the advert might not know who you are, but your phone does). The idea is to enrich the physical world with digital assets and with tens of millions of dollars spent each year advancing the technology, commercial applications are just around the corner.         Posted Sep 22 2008, 03:17 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments Filed under: personalisation, direct mail, virrtual reality

• Aberdeen Anguish

  Excuse the awful title to this title - no steaks involved - but the following heartwarming BBC article made me sit up. A homeless charity in Aberdeen has turned to the cash-rich world of commercial print to cover cut backs to its funding. The Cyrenians operate Iceberg Arts Design and Print studio out of a former toilet block using the skills of around 40 voluntary workers and, according to the Beeb, they're not making any money. Let's just go through that again: a charity - working out of a toilet - with no labour costs - isn't making any money from the print trade. And you wonder why the rest of the sector is struggling... Posted Sep 19 2008, 08:53 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments Filed under: Scotland

• It's the economy, stupid

  Yes, stupid. That's me. We're in a global financial meltdown. I'm not sure which bank I should be paying my mortgage to this or next month, and each might be different, so bear with my confusion. On a print note, it turns out one of Lehman Brothers' creditors is RR Donnelley. It was important enough to have been appointed to a committee of creditors hastily put together to represent creditors' interests after the Barclays deal. But now it has made a statement saying it had less than $1m out to the company and resigned its position. According to reports, Lehman Brothers had debts of $613bn. RR Donnelley "exposure" of $1m in trade accounts receivables hardly puts it on the radar compared to other creditors, let alone give it a seat on the Lehman Unsecured Creditors Committee. Do people not spot these things?   Posted Sep 18 2008, 05:29 AM by Matt Whipp with 1 comment(s)

• De-bunking de-inking

  One of the interesting aspects to come out of a recent interview I had with one of HP's scientists on the work they were doing on de-inking inkjet print was that it's really no big deal. HP senior scientist for inkjet R&D and environmental strategy Nils Miller was reasonably cagey about how far down the road HP actually is on de-inking inkjet, but the nub of it is that it can be done. A special bonding agent is added during the print process to cause the ink particles to come together. This means they sit on top of the paper rather than dissolve into it, improving print quality, but also means they are now the right size to be dispersed of the paper using standard flotation processes. All jolly good, but then I spoke to the European paper manufacturers' body INGEDE which is charged with promoting the use of recycled paper. They had actually seen the results of HP's efforts and were considerably impressed. In fact a spokesperson described paper recycled from HP inkjet web press prints as "better than that of offset newspapers". Not bad from the association that only in February condemned inkjet as "a gross aberration" in a world where environmental concerns are so high. But there's a big but coming. The HP method only works with pigment inks. Liquid toners, dye etc won't benefit. "Liquid toner is still a major problem," said the spokesperson. HP said it would develop de-inking techniques with the Digital Print De-inking Alliance (with Kodak, Oce and Infoprint) in the open and not look to patent or charge for use (although it said it would take information that comes out of the alliance back to see how it could be applied to its own portfolio of products). Dry toner remains relatively easily de-inkable, but this clarification from INGEDE might mean this whole de-inking issue becomes a boost rather than barrier to inkjet. Now if only HP had been able to talk about this before the "inkjet" Drupa where it launched the web press.      Posted Sep 15 2008, 04:22 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments

• The pre-enjoyed premium

  Interesting piece on the wires that caught my eye - HP suing a German inkjet cartridge manufacturer over selling new cartridges, as remanufactured cartridges. Presumably the green glint of remanufactured cartridges meant that they were more desirable, although I suspect we're some way off seeing charity shops selling second-hand clothes at higher prices than new. But it shows how serious the environmental issue is to HP, not just from a humanitarian/CSR point of view, but also as a hard-nosed business issue. It invests a huge amount of resources into methods of recycling and remanufacturing its equipment and doesn't want remanufacturing tarnished with these sharp practices. To cut to the chase, HP wins and the world is saved from a world where brand new goods masquerade as remanufactured. I often wonder whether we've overcooked the whole green debate, whether we've talked it up too much for too long. But HP here thinks its remanufactured products are a business line worth protecting. So perhaps I'm wrong and, even in these penny pinching days, consumers still take the green choice and prefer and value print manufactured in an environmentally sound manner. I hope so.   Posted Sep 15 2008, 02:20 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments Filed under: HP, environment

• Boom and gloom

  You could be forgiven that being in a struggling sector in a struggling economy is not an encouraging sign. But I got hold of a report from Global Industry Analysts that suggests the European commercial print industry will be robust enough to continue healthy investment in new kit over the next few years. The Printing Machinery and Supplies report claims to take into account the impact of the Internet, consolidation, changes in the advertising industry, emerging economies and digital printing and still maintains the market value will grow 8% in Europe between now and 2010 to sales of $10.9bn (£6bn) representing 45.8% of the global market. In short, sales of printing equipment, and Europe's share of that market, are on an upwards trajectory despite the bearish predictions of recession. The only caveat to this is that the company has given its research an error margin of plus or minus 10%!   Posted Sep 08 2008, 07:17 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments

• Money talks on company accounts filing

  One article that kicked up a storm on the forums of late has been the BPIF's response to Sainsbury's decision to send out its latest company financials to shareholders electronically. BPIF chief executive Michael Johnson described the move as greenwashing a cost-cutting exercise. Quite how you present Sainsbury's move is somewhat redundant (you could argue that Sainsbury's is taking its green remit very seriously as it is also now printing receipts on both sides). Our printweek.com poll on the issue showed that 9 in 10 of our readers expect more companies to file accounts electronically, rather than sticking with paper, and this is backed up by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US that is urging companies to use a new format called XBRL to file accounts. This allows shareholders to view financial data side by side with that of other companies. It makes the data more useful in electronic form than in print. What's more telling is that one of the key backers of this is none other than RR Donnelley. A spokesperson told me: "As we provide this expertise, we strengthen our relationships with our customers, create opportunities to become involved further upstream in their financial reporting processes, and better position RR Donnelley to provide a full range of financial services – from virtual data rooms to printed communications." In short, "get with the program". The body covering how companies report in the UK is the Financial Reporting Council. They say they are well aware of the benefits of XBRL but have yet to formulate a policy on its adoption. They say the US sneezes and the UK catches a cold. It seems inevitable that printing company accounts increasingly become an on-demand business.     Posted Sep 08 2008, 03:09 AM by Matt Whipp with no comments Filed under: Sainsbury's, financial printing