Published by Blackstone Research Associates

Print Demand to be Steady for 20 Years

Reprinted from May 2001

In two decades, nearly half of all print will be produced by digital printers, according to Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond, a research report published by the Electronic Document Systems Foundation (EDSF, Torrance, CA). Even though in that far-away time frame print will still be growing ever so slightly, use of documents that are not printed will be quite common. In 2020, the report projects, 65% of all information will be used in electronic form.

EDSF could not have found a better sage to develop an understanding of print in the future. For more that six months last year, Frank Romano, chairman of the School of Printing and Management Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology, guided a team of graduate students from California Polytechnic State University, Clemson University, and Rochester Institute of Technology as they investigated how advances in technology will affect what we know of as print. The researchers defined print "to include any communications presented on paper, regardless of where and how it originated." The principal research objective was to understand how people consider print now, and how they expect to behave differently in the future.

Primary research included interviews with 2,232 "consumers and professionals who represent stakeholders in print communication…" The first one-third of the report is a set of essays explaining how a dozen principal factors will affect the way we use or "consume" print. Factors examined include population, literacy, information access, technology development, technology acceptance, economics, education, communications, personal, professional, and media competition. A principal conclusion of the Factors Affecting Print chapter is that rapid technology adoption is being fostered by an infrastructure that is becoming more pervasive and more capable. Although we tend to focus on the here-and-now, Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond notes that, in spite of a fertile and growing infrastructure, "It [inter-related key factors] will all reach critical mass no later than 2010 – 2015. At that point, the technologies will be in place to compete with print." A report whose first line is an early "paperless" quote (1970s) is not about to suggest the demise of print, though. The authors conclude, in the Factors Affecting Print chapter, that "It will take until the turn of the next millennium for print to be a shadow of itself." Over the next 20 years, the authors expect print to grow slightly, by 1% to 2% per year. In the last 80 years of this century, print will decline at increasing rates, until revenue from printing will be about 40% of what it is today. (Early in the Factors Affecting Print chapter, printing industry revenue is pegged at $997 billion worldwide.)

After covering consumption issues, the researchers turn their attention to production issues—the print industry itself. "The printing industry is the output engine for the information originator and the creative process," the report explains. Although the public at large generally sees what publishers publish (magazines, books, and newspapers), business is the biggest consumer of print. Even though the authors admit that the technology used for printing documents in the future is less important than the ratio of documents that will be printed at all, the report provides no fewer than seven charts and tables that break out expected proportions of print across a variety of print methods. By 2020, the authors expect that nearly half (48%) of printed pages will be digital, and 52% will be produced on presses. By then, 65% of all information will be communicated in electronic form.

A step-by-step examination of how digital technology will affect 13 major print categories makes up the balance of Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond. The categories are broken into segments. The current (1999) revenue for each segment is provided (from the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry and the American Paper Institute), and principal trends affecting each segment are discussed. The authors provide a projection of growth or decline in paper consumption for each major print category. Based on their projections, we have calculated the growth and decline rates for the 13 major print categories (see chart).

Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond is an important work for several reasons. First, on a segment-by-segment basis, the authors identify and "net out" both technology and behavioral factors that are expected to influence the demand for print, and provide emphatic statements (that is, market numbers) about print growth and decline. Second, Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond provides a long-term view, providing specific projections until 2020, and providing analysis well beyond that. Finally, although the report benefits from a wealth of primary and secondary research, the authors take full responsibility for making forward statements—in essence, weighing inputs and making decisions about how much to rely on survey results and how much to rely on their own judgment about the landscape of the future.

Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond is published by the Electronic Document Systems Foundation. ISBN 0-9658790-2-X. The 150-page soft-cover book sells for $395 ($295 for Xplor members). Included Bibliography. Additional information about Printing in the Age of the Web & Beyond and an order form can be found at www.edsf.org.

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