More and more book manufacturers are relying on digital workflows to supplement and complement their overall production needs. This rising growth in popularity is due to the fact that new advances in digital finishing are enabling book manufacturers to economically and productively make short-run titles with little or no sacrifice to the quality of the finished product.

In the past, the emphasis in digital manufacturing had been on achieving printing results on par with commercial offset presses. Digital printing is constantly improving with companies like Muller Martini bringing commercial-quality finishing to the digital market. Fundamental shifts in the book publishing industry drive the need to elevate digital finishing. A greater amount of book production has migrated to digital because publishing companies have become increasingly wary of spending a lot of money on massive runs.

Achieving a level of commercial quality finishing in a challenging digital workflow is only possible if equipment manufacturers pay attention to the slightest details in machine design. For example, the milling station in a short-run perfect binder must generate sufficient paper fiber exposure and notch it in a way that results in page pull-test durability equal to the industry’s best machines. Scalability is another significant attribute of state-of-the-art digital binding systems because it lets book publishers add other finishing components as the need arises.

Tags: digital book publishing

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