Grub Street Printing Newsletter #13 Oct./Nov. 2009

Illegal Paper: The Lacey Act

Effective April 1, 2010, it will be illegal to “import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire or purchase” products made from illegally sourced plants or plant products. In short, paper made from rainforest trees, in particular, or protected species cannot be used in the manufacture of books printed or sold in the U.S.

Books printed in Asia will be under heavy scrutiny, but since Asian paper, especially from China, is exported and sold globally as well as in the U.S., all books will need to have appropriate chain of custody documentation, which should be available from your printer.

There will be no “innocent owner provision” and fines can be as high as $500,000.

(See GSP Newsletter #7, Oct. 2008 for more on International Paper’s Indonesian paper mill.)

Contact us for recommendations.

Google and Espresso 2.0

Google Books has announced that it will make its 2 million non-copyrighted books available for production on Espresso 2.0 on demand book making machines. Some of the machines are in university libraries which will apparently compete with local book retailers.

Google Books will recommend a retail price of $8 per book (any trim size, any page count?) but will leave final pricing to the retailer.

You can see a short video of an Espresso 2.0 making a book at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pt4T-AJKJM

Paper Prices

Some pulp and paper mills will test an increase of roughly 10% in pulp prices effective Oct. 1 to see if demand is sufficient to support an increase.

National Bookstore Day

Publishers Weekly is encouraging publishers to offer special discounts and promotions to their independent bookstore outlets to increase store traffic and promote book buying on National Bookstore Day, Nov. 7. PW is hoping more than 200 indies will participate.

Vooks Are New

Simon & Schuster has released 4 vooks (books with video) in 4 different genres. Vooks are available for iPhones and some other handheld devices but not for the Kindle or Sony e-Reader, which have no video capability.

More information on vooks at http://www.publetariat.com/publish/what-vook-and-how-will-it-change-publishing

Print 09

A look at this year’s print show can be seen on American Printer TV http://americanprinter.com/tv/viewing/index.html. It has some upbeat print forecasts and shows the new touch-screen color controls available on the newest multi-color presses.