London - London publishing house Elwin Street has turned to Ricoh’s digital printing production technology to enable it to promote new titles at this years’ London Book Fair, April 14 to 16, Olympia.

The collaboration sees Ricoh’s cut sheet digital presses used to print books on demand. It allows the ten year old independent co-edition packager with a prestigious international client base, to produce small quantities of offset-like quality books. This will help them more cost effectively market their new trade list as part of the Modern Books focus at the key three-day publishing event.  

Modern Books features illustrated, practical titles for mindful living, with healthy eating, parenting, active ageing and creativity being core categories. Titles printed by Ricoh’s digital cutsheet technology will include: The Vegetarian Year by Jane Hughes, endorsed by the UK Vegetarian Society; The Alkaline Cookbook by Dr Stephan Domenig and the Alkaline Cleanse, the follow up to the best-selling Alkaline Cure; Love, Aimee x featuring 50 original, creative desserts from Aimee Twigger’s kitchen, as featured on her popular blog. 

Silvia Langford, Director of Elwin Street, comments: “We are a packager of trade books, specialising in popular science and cookery. To date we have printed everything using offset print, so being able to print small quantities of our new titles before they are fully published was not always economically viable. However, since we met Ricoh at last years’ London Book Fair, we have found the possibilities their digital presses can open up very interesting. Their ability to produce books with high production values in very small quantities enables us to show our clients what new titles will look like. We expect this will help us to close more sales.” 

“At Ricoh we see Publishing as a significant opportunity for our digital print technologies,” comments Ricoh Europe's Business Development Director Graham Moore. “We are delighted to work with Elwin Street in this way. The flexibility that digital print can offer – especially for very short runs - helps publishers like Elwin Street take a more considered approach to their print production processes. With digital print they can agree run lengths that suits today’s demand and know there is the ability to produce variable quantities in the future.”