04/07/2023
Richard Celarc, CEO of Australia's biggest book manufacturing business Opus Group, recently discussed the state of printing in the Australian book market with Print21, touching on offshore printing, censorship, ebooks, and a return to growth for print books – including for education.
The market for printed books is one of the most highly contested in the industry. Vulnerable not only to cheap imports but also to ebooks, it has seen massive consolidation and retirements over the years. Opus Group is the acknowledged leader in Australia.
China is a huge presence in the book printing market, able to land books here at half the price or less of local production. No matter the type of book – read-for-pleasure, educational or commercial, casebound or paperback – the threat from China is never far away. It’s a threat that Richard Celarc has lived with most of his working life. He has a unique perspective, not only from his position as head of the largest local book printer, but also as a subsidiary of Red Lion, the Hong Kong global behemoth. Over the years he’s developed a sanguine attitude to customers printing offshore, pointing to the inherent disadvantages of printing in China and the relative advantages of local production.
‘We can’t compete on price with China, that’s true. Books are printed there at half the price but that’s only half the story. You can’t always get them here on time. It’s a matter of two weeks versus two months.
‘Plus there is increasing censorship in China. Every manuscript is now read and if there is something in there they don’t like, it’s just tossed out. You can never be sure.’
Due to changing macroeconomic conditions, and technology changes, more book printing is coming back onshore. Celarc attributes it to a combination of cost, trust and convenience.
‘The way the world works is changing. With shipping costs increasing, it used to be the case that a publisher would print three hundred thousand books in the UK and send fifty thousand to Australia. That’s become a lot more expensive. Now they just send us a file. And they’re assured of the same level of quality and production values.’
The arrival of ebooks in 2009 presented an existential challenge to the whole sector. Many believed printed books would not survive the electronic challenge. Certainly the arrival of ebooks initially put a huge dent in the demand, especially the read-for-pleasure market. Celarc traces the initial decline from the introduction of ebooks in 2009.
‘When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, books started to go downhill. At the same time ebooks began to take off, while read-for-pleasure paper went backwards. It dropped by at least half until 2016. Then the demand for ebooks flattened out and printed books started to come back. Since then they’ve climbed every year, up by ten per cent in the first year, twenty in the second, twenty five in the third year. And it shows no sign of stopping.’
He tells a similar story about the educational market, where a similar revival is driving demand for printed books.
‘There is a study from Harvard that found students who studied using paper books gained more marks on every occasion than those who studied on computers and digital. So a lot of educational publishers who went from paper to screen have come back again. One of our customers in Melbourne used to do electronic education on a blue board with a teacher standing in front of the computer. They would do a lecture while the students watched it on screen. Now they’ve moved into books. The first year coming from electronics to paper we did $200,000. The second year $500,000. This year we did $1.3m’
Celarc is also enthusiastic about the reality of a printed book versus ebooks.
‘We’ve become acclimatised to the screen, and people who work with computers all day don’t want to do it when they come home. Plus there’s the smell and tactile pleasure of a high quality book. That will never change.’
This is an extract from an article published in the May-June issue of Print21, and is republished with permission.