Despite advances in technology and the rise of e-books and audio books, traditional printed books remain many people’s preferred method of reading the latest best seller. In fact, according to the Pew Reseach Center, in 2016 65% people in the U.S. read a book, while only 28% read e-books and 14% listened to audio books. In fact, print media still accounts for a large portion of book sales worldwide, clocking in at about 80% of 2015 book sales around the globe. So why are actual paper books so much more popular than e-books and audio books? Well, according to studies, readers typically find printed books more engaging than online articles. Because of that, printing shipments are continuing to rise, and are up more than $2.2 billion since 2014.

To accommodate the demand for actual printed books, printing companies are having to ensure that their facilities are up to the task o printing so many books. This means printing companies need to stay up to date on the latest and greatest tools, like a perfect binding machine, a wire binding machine, or an automatic coil binder, to ensure they can keep up with demand. So far, companies have been able to meet demand so well that the printing industry has become one of the world?s largest industries. For comparison, it is estimated to be nearly eight times larger than the video game industry, and even larger than the auto manufacturing industry!

So back to the actual process of bookbinding. Fortunately, technological advances have made the process of book binding so much more simple. In the old days, book binding had to be done by hand and it was a tedious process. On average, operators could bind maybe 100 small books in an hour, and only 20 large ones. Nowadays, with tools like a perfect binding machine and other nifty bookbinding equipment, hundreds and even thousands of books can be bound per hour. For example, with the Sterling DIGIPUNCH, a high-speed automatic paper punching machine, 72,000 sheets of paper can be punched per hour. High-tech machines like the Sterling DIGIPUNCH make it possible for the U.S. to transform nearly 9,125,000,000 tons of paper into books, magazines, and newspapers each year!