The demise of print advertising in 1 graph says it all

I know conventional wisdom tells us that traditional print is dying or on the decline as the article in the Atlantic above link points out when it comes to pointing out advertising revenues.  The fact is however that HP's sales have grown, Xerox sales have grown, Staples Print Solutions sales have grown, Canon sales have grown, FedEx Office sales have grown, UPS Stores sales have grown and it is very much due in large part to the shifting of traditional print to Print On Demand or digital print at your desk.

I recently was engaged in a lively discussion with a professor lamenting on the growth of the tablets and ebook readers and the death or decline of the printed book.  Which led to a discussion on the history of the Kinko's Coursepacks, which helped to build Kinko's into the brand that became synonomous with digital printing and reproduction graphics.  I grew up near College Park, Maryland which is the main campus for the University of Maryland's 40,000 student population that had a book exchange for used books, an official campus bookstore, but also had the Kinko's off campus.  Professors would create course packages which included taking a chapter from this particular textbook or that particular textbook to create a section course guide to accompany his syllabus.  When you registered for your class, and picked up your syllabus, you got the reading assignments which included assigned books from wherever you could get them (book exchange or campus bookstore), but also from Kinko's picking up the specific coursepack he had put together to teach his class.

This made it possible for a custom edition book to be created for the class.  It was updated and current up to the latest possible moment when the professor included articles or papers he thought would educate his students best.   Then they were printed on demand and the students were forced to buy them.  Needless to say that after about 10 years of this, the publishers of these textbooks settled with Kinko's to stop this practice so they could control their protected copywritten material rather than the educator who was using the material for educational purposes, and Kinko's adopted an approval format to go forward.

The advent of great content in the digital age makes it not only necessary but highly likely that we will see a resurgence of printed books or magazines or newspapers as valuable permanent keepsake handed down in families or held in libraries.  I easily see where bookstore retailers will partner with publishers, print and binding manufacturers as well as ebook makers to enable the printing on demand of ebook titles that can be picked up at the local bookstore or retailer like Walmart for nominal costs and have high enough quality to make the product a keepsake for the family library (much like the typical photobook products offered at a camera store these days).  When enough independent authors and publishers unite against the larger publishers who tightly control the industry and work together to protect their interests and figure this out,  I am sure we will see an adoption of just this type of custom book made on the spot in popular bookstores and print on demand is the dominant model for all print media.

Owning a retail bookstore these days is probably a risky business, but add print on demand equipment, know how and publisher permission to the mix and you have a revitalized industry where printed books, articles and newspaper content are the dominant format for permanence and family libraries and keepsakes.