Duku, Canon team up for printing venture

Canon printers on display at an exhibition in Beijing. Canon's digital printing technology will help users custom-order their favorite books. [Wu Changqing / For China Daily]

Chinese bookworms will soon be able to place orders for long out-of-print books, in a project being masterminded by the Japanese imaging and optical products giant Canon (China) Co Ltd, and Chinese publisher Duku.

Using Canon's modern digital printing technology customers can now custom-order their favorite best-sellers, or even books printed in tiny numbers.

As well as letting readers own whatever books they want, officials say the joint-project will also help eliminate huge stocks of unsold books.

Books can be produced in small quantities, said Zhang Lixian, editor-in-chief of Duku, and even carry printed personal messages and pictures on the title page or instructions and advice within the text for readers at certain places.

The digital printing technology to be used quite simply does away with traditional offset printing methods which normally produced books in bulk, said Zhang, adding the extra customization will add no more cost to the customer.

Wilbert Verheyen, vice-president of Canon (China), said: "Publishers are unwilling to reprint books which have been out of print for decades because these usually do not sell very well.

"In a survey carried out in Germany, 70 percent of publishers' inventories were books that had been in stock for more than two years, and 20 percent had been in stock for over five years. That is a huge cost for publishers."

Verheyen said any book can be scanned, digitalized, and then printed, giving a customer what is essentially his own personalized copy.

The cooperation with Duku is part of Canon's wider Chinese strategy, which promotes digital printing in all its forms, a market it hopes it can dominate nationally.

Verheyen reckons 98 percent of the Chinese printing market is still dominated by traditional offset printing methods, but digital is catching on fast, growing 10 percent annually which provides the Japanese company with massive growth potential, he said.

According to Shenzhen-based CIC Industry Research Center, the Chinese print industry was worth around 1.03 trillion yuan ($168.1 billion) last year, making it the world's second-largest market. Foreign investment into the sector increased to $3.89 billion, CIC said, from the $2 billion a year earlier.

Global third quarter results released by Canon in late October showed office and business sales combined in the first nine months - including sales of multifunction devices, laser printers and other office printing supplies - grew 2.4 percent year-on-year to 1,513.9 billion yen ($1.4 billion).

But its imaging systems business - which includes interchangeable-lens digital cameras, digital compact cameras, and inkjet printers - fell 8.9 percent year-on-year to 941 billion yen, largely due to continued weak markets in Europe and Japan.

Canon bought the Netherlands-based printing and copying solution provider Oce NV in 2009, in one of its early moves in digital printing.