Finally some good printing news to report. Despite sales being down, profits were up for the first quarter, confirming recent surveys reflecting the optimism of surviving print businesses. While these surveys can be somewhat misleading in terms of overall industry size and growth (see my column on survivor bias), for the past couple of months there has been anecdotal evidence of printers doing better.

In my opinion, much of this is coming from the picking over of carcasses of dead competitors, but a lot of the improved bottom line has come from paying closer attention to costs and improving productivity in both production and business operations. I don't know if printers are actually able to charge more, but often a dying competitor's last gasp is to underprice some work just to stay busy. With some of those companies now deceased, remaining printers can charge prices with which they are more comfortable. (It's economics: supply goes down, prices risebut never as much as business owners would like).

One of my industry acquaintances has suggested that the improved profits are also coming from those value-added services we keep hearing about. I don't know if that's true because printers have always offered value added services of one kind or anothertypesetting, scanningand these newer services look to me like they are replacing those lost arts. (Gosh, remember what a good cash flow used to come from author's alterations? They would get so expensive sometimes that publishers would threaten to personally alter the authors with a dull knife if they didn't stop making changes.)