Charlottesville, VA - INTERQUEST, a leading market and technology research and consulting firm serving the digital printing and publishing industry, today announced a ten percent increase in attendance at its annual 2011 Digital Book Printing Forum held during the Publishing Business Conference and Expo in New York City on April 5.

According to Gilles Biscos, President of INTERQUEST, "We were very pleased with the increase in attendance because last year's traffic was also up significantly. But even more importantly, we saw a high level of engagement from the attendees throughout the day. We credit that to the quality of the program, and especially our speakers, who play key roles in all segments of the industry, as well as to ever increasing motivation from publishers and printers to integrate digital printing into their book publishing and printing strategies."

Bob Young, CEO of Lulu, a leading self-publishing company, delivered a lively and thought-provoking keynote address that examined the interplay of innovation and competition in the business world. Lulu is a $40 million dollar business that publishes 20,000 new titles each month. The company has published over one million titles since its founding about five years ago. Prior to founding Lulu, Young created Red Hat, an open source software company that successfully challenged established industry giants with a radically new approach to enterprise software and operating systems.

According to Young, businesses should invent their future rather than trying to predict it because experience has taught leaders of successful companies such as Bill Gates of Microsoft to fear "the kid inventing something in his garage" more than direct competitors. Young told attendees that printed books will always play an important role despite the fast-growing market for eBooks because humans are tactile and crave the immediacy and longevity of printed works. As Young pointed out, a physical book is simply a reading device--it provides the same function that an iPad or Kindle does. The consumer is really trying to get to the book content. Unlike electronic formats, however, the content in books will be accessible as long as the book persists. How many of the files that you created in the 1980s or even the 90s can you still read today?

Following the keynote, INTERQUEST shared an update of the digital book printing market with attendees, including highlights from recent research it has conducted with large publishers and book printers. Throughout the day the event featured interactive roundtable discussions and presentations focused on key issues and opportunities for digital book manufacturing from leading publishers, book printers, and suppliers of digital printing systems, software, substrates, and finishing equipment.

The 2011 Digital Book Printing Forum was sponsored by leading players in the market, including Blurb, Bridgeport National Bindery, Gasch Printing, Glatfelter, Hewlett-Packard, InfoPrint Solutions, Kodak, Lulu, Océ, Standard Finishing, Webcom, and Xerox. The event was supported by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) and the Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN). For more information about the event, please visit the forum's web site:
www.inter-quest.com/2011DigitalBookPrintingForum.html.