Ever since Gutenberg German industry has led the way in big printing presses but now ” Germany’s dominance in spreading the written word is in danger of fading,” the WSJ reports. Heidelberger still leads the world in sheet-fed offset presses, a market in which German companies control 70 percent. But the world is moving to digital presses, and the German business faces additional challenges from less expensive Japanese machines, further helped by a weak yen. Illinois’ Goss International is a competitor as well. They bought a majority stake in Heidelberger’s web offset unit in 2004 and are now developing offset […]
Printing
Chinese Printers Are Censoring Books for Export
Two Australian publishers report incidents of censorship by Chinese printers of their books. A printer company in Guangdong in southern China informed the UNSW Press after their book was printed that “Chinese authorities have found sentences within the text which infringe their sovereignty and have refused to grant an export authorization.” (There was a reference to the “China-Tibet border” in a biography by Felicity Jack.) And Hardie Grant reports “a similar problem with a reference book being printed in Hong Kong for an international market after it was advised to remove a picture of the Dalai Lama.”SMH