Both companies forewarned that, although UK book printers will all be running at capacity in the lead up to Christmas, work historically dries up in January due to publishing schedules, and this make life harder for printers.

CPI Antony Rowe divisional general manager Ralph Bell said: "Every book printer for the last two months has been absolutely stuffed full of work. We're all struggling to keep on schedule but come January, it falls off a cliff."

Tony Chard, MPG Books Group managing director, added: "In January, February and March, printers suffer from low volume but they're getting the high receipts from October, November and December. The crunch comes at the end of March and beginning of April in our industry."

In addition to problems arising from seasonal volume fluctuation, the effects of the current economic crisis on both payment terms and credit facilities, which are already having an impact on the industry, are likely to worsen next year.

"You can be busy but if you can't draw down on an invoice discounting facility to generate cash there and then, then you're in trouble," Chard said.

"Some of our suppliers are trying to reduce payment terms from 90 to 60 days because they can't generate enough cash, so now they're asking us to do it for them."

Bell added: "It's become more difficult – like everybody else we are experiencing a lengthening of payment terms and I think we will see, certainly in the smaller end of the publishing market, some businesses incapable of meeting their debts."

According to Bell, CPI Antony Rowe has also noticed a rise in monochrome book printing in the Far East, which has placed even greater pressure on the UK market.

He said: "Whereas it was only colour books before, the Far East is now beginning to look at monochrome books, certainly for longer run work where it's not time critical.

"They're geared up for doing colour books, but interestingly the Americans have pulled back a lot of work back into the US, so Chinese printers aren't getting the work they were getting and, consequently, they're turning their eyes in other directions."

He added: "They've never really been interested in monochrome until the last six or seven months. Colour was their forte because that's what they're geared up to, but when you've got presses standing idle you'll take anything."