BMI 2026 report

Publishers Weekly headlines their story on the Book Manufacturers’ Institute’s 2026 State of the Book Industry Report with the eye-catching words “Book Manufacturing Could Soon See Major Changes”. They quote from the report “Historically, purchasing has trended toward sourcing books at the lowest unit cost, which would then be printed with conventional technology and stored in inventory as needed. . . As book demand has dropped amidst digitization,* publishers are now increasingly less inclined to purchase in such high volumes with inventory and disposal costs potentially negating the low unit cost savings.” Duh? More than three decades ago I left a good job in publishing to sell this exact idea to book publishers. As PW puts it “Though the unit cost of each individual book will likely be higher with digital printing than with offset printing, using digital printing lets publishers order in quantities that they feel confident will be sold, thereby reducing leftover inventory costs”.…