Leveraging the power of digital technology to print books in real time, HP will become Amazon’s preferred provider for colour print-on-demand services.
Multiple HP Indigo digital presses have been installed at Amazon fulfillment centers and are now producing full-colour books on demand as well as colour covers for black and white books.
The books-on-demand market is expected to grow from approximately 20 billion book pages in 2006 to approximately 38 billion book pages by 2009. This is due primarily to the increasing demand for small-volume, rare and self-published books.
“Amazon is completely focused on the customer experience,” said Greg Greeley, vice president of books at Amazon.com. “This collaboration with HP will enable us to significantly increase the number of available titles our customers can purchase while offering publishers the highest quality color printing options.”
In addition to installing HP Indigo presses, Amazon’s facilities will be among the first in the United States to install the new HP Indigo Production Manager digital front-end controller, which combines HP IT and graphic arts technologies for rapid file processing in complex digital publishing scenarios.
