The company described the figure as a "significant increase in print on-demand manufacturing" at its UK facility.

Lightning Source president David Taylor said that the company expected around 20% growth in the UK in 2009, with January's figures already exceeding expectations.

The company, which operates a fleet of digital presses, moved to a new site in Milton Keynes last year, which was five times the size of its previous operation.

Taylor said that the 8,000sqm facility had "plenty of capacity" to cope with the expected increase in work this year, but added that the company also had international expansion plans in the pipeline.

He said that the economic downturn had made on-demand even more attractive to publishers as it takes out much of logistical and inventory costs, and more international sites would mean they could print closer to the source of demand.

"Print-on-demand is peculiarly appropriate for the times we are in," he said.

"With the current economic conditions, publishers are looking to shore up their balance sheets. Some publishers are on a path to get out of inventory completely."

Recent research from Interquest predicted that digital book printing is likely to grow between 15 and 20% annually in volume, although the size of the overall market will remain unchanged.

Interquest president Gilles Biscos said: "With on-demand quality no longer an issue, market trends indicate that digital printing is very much transforming the way the book industry operates."

Taylor said that with 6,500 publishers on board and more than a decade of on-demand printing behind the company, on-demand printing could not be considered a fad, or a sop to vanity publishing.

"It's not a flash in the pan, we've been going for 12 years now in the US and UK and printed more than 65m books," he said. "It's good news for the book as a product."