Gareth Williams, Newspaper Club"Digital print allows us to offer runs as short as five copies at an economical price. And we’re planning to offer single copies soon. Small runs are proving more and more popular, especially since we’ve been offering digital printing in colour. We work in a niche, one that we think will get bigger, but still one that’s probably never going to result in the printing of hundreds of thousands of copies. We’ve set out to link the web with the physical world and we believe there are other useful ways to do this, especially in on-demand, bespoke, self-published products."
Paul Manning, sales director, Printflow"By printing digitally, newspapers can be personalised for different readers, enabling advertisers to target their audience better – and pay for that service. It also enables editors to change the editorial based on the region and demographic of the readership. This will, in turn, increase the readership. Like many digital printed products, there really is the opportunity to run electronic personalisation marketing techniques on printed media. This is why the future can only be digital."
Ian McDonald, former operations director, News International"Digital is perfect for small sites and small runs, but it is still light years away from traditional newspaper printing. It will be a long time before you can consider it for 100,000 or even 50,000 runs. The timescales just don’t add up, newspapers have the tightest deadlines and you won’t be able to get 60,000 newspapers out in a couple of hours. A large event like the Royal Wedding would be impossible. Of course there is a market for it: it’s good for small weeklies, very remote locations and printing in foreign countries."
