Bowker Reports U.S. Book Production Declines 3% in 2008, but "On Demand" Publishing More Than Doubles

NEW PROVIDENCE, NJ -- (Marketwire) -- 05/19/09

Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information management solutions, today released statistics on U.S. book publishing for 2008, compiled from its Books In Print® database. Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that U.S. title output in 2008 decreased by 3.2%, with 275,232 new titles and editions, down from the 284,370 that were published in 2007.

Despite this decline in traditional book publishing, there was another extraordinary year of growth in the reported number of "On Demand" and short-run books produced in 2008. Bowker projects that 285,394 On Demand books were produced last year, a staggering 132% increase over last year's final total of 123,276 titles. This is the second consecutive year of triple-digit growth in the On Demand segment, which in 2008 was 462% above levels seen as recently as 2006.

"Our statistics for 2008 benchmark an historic development in the U.S. book publishing industry as we crossed a point last year in which On Demand and short-run books exceeded the number of traditional books entering the marketplace," said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publisher services for New Providence, N.J.-based Bowker. "It remains to be seen how this trend will unfold in the coming years before we know if we just experienced a watershed year in the book publishing industry, fueled by the changing dynamics of the marketplace and the proliferation of sophisticated publishing technologies, or an anomaly that caused the major industry trade publishers to retrench."

(Editor's Note: Members of the news media who are interested in obtaining statistics from Bowker for specific industry categories are invited to email Daryn Teague, Bowker's public relations consultant, at dteague@teaguecommunications.com.)

"The statistics from last year are not just an indicator that the industry had a decline in new titles coming to the market, but they're also a reflection of how publishers are getting smarter and more strategic about the specific kinds of books they're choosing to publish," explained Gallagher. "If you look beyond the numbers, you begin to see that 2008 was a pivotal year that benchmarks the changing face of publishing."

Among the major publishing categories, the big winners last year were Education and Business, two categories that might suggest publishers were seeking to give consumers more resources for success amidst a very tough job environment. There were 9,510 new education titles introduced in the U.S. in 2008, up 33% from the prior year, and 8,838 new business titles, an increase of 14% over 2007 levels.

By contrast, the big category losers in 2008 were Travel and Fiction, two categories in which publishers clearly saw less demand during a deep recession in the U.S. There were 4,817 new travel books introduced last year, down 15% from the year before, and 47,541 new fiction titles, a drop of 11% from 2007. Moreover, the Religion category dropped again last year, with 14% fewer titles introduced in the U.S., and that once reliable engine of growth for publishers is now well off its peak year of 2004.

According to Gallagher, the Bowker data reveals that the top five categories for U.S. book production in 2008 were:

    1. Fiction (47,541 new titles)
   2. Juveniles (29,438)
   3. Sociology/Economics (24,423)
   4. Religion (16,847)
   5. Science (13,555)

Methodology

The book production figures in this news release are based on year-to-date data from U.S. publishers and include traditional print as well as on demand titles. Audiobooks and E-books are excluded. If changes in industry estimates occur, they will be reflected in a later published report. Books In Print data represents input from more than 75,000 publishers in the U.S. The data is sent to Bowker in electronic files, and via BowkerLink(TM), Bowker's password protected Web-based tool, which enables publishers to update and add their own data.

Books In Print is the only bibliographic database with more than 8 million U.S. book, audiobook and video titles. It is widely regarded throughout the publishing industry as the most authoritative and comprehensive source of bibliographic data available worldwide, and has been a trusted source of data in North America for more than 50 years.

Google Buys a Paper Mill

Google continues to find new ways to influence the publishing industry. Stora Enso, a global paper, packaging and forest products company with facilities in more than 35 countries, announced yesterday it has agreed to sell its Summa Mill site in Finland to Google for approximately $51.7 million. Google is expected to convert the facilities into a center for data storage.

The sale should close by the end of the first quarter of 2009. Production had been halted at the mill in January 2008 as a result of "persistent losses in recent years and poor long-term profitability prospects," according to the company.

Don't Pull the Plug on Print Yet

(C) 2008 Business NH Magazine. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved - Business NH Magazine

Jack Cummings has been around the printing industry for pretty much all his life. His grandfather stalled Cummings Printing in 1914. Young Jack forged his printing career working after school and during the summers, toiling in the mailing department, bindery and the pressroom. He also drove the company truck. After college, Cummings took a job in the typesetting department and eventually landed in sales at the Hooksett-based company. It was while he was in the sales department in the late 1990s that he realized that in order for Cummings Printing to weather the desktop publishing and Internet revolutions occurring at the time - and position the company for a more secure future - it had to become more than a local sheet-fed commercial printer.

In other words, Cummings Printing would have to become a company almost unrecognizable to his late grandfather and his small commercial press. To do that, Cummings invested heavily in new technologies and changed its business model. "If we had not laid it on the line and taken major loans to become a magazine and catalog printer - a Web printer versus a sheet-fed printer, which is what we were and what differentiates us from your local printer - then we would not be enjoying the success we am right now," he says. (Editors note: Cummings prints Business NH Magazine.)

Even with his firm conviction, however, Cummings endured his share of nerve-tacking moments - along with just about every other printer during recent yeas. Industry watchers predicted at the turn of the century that the Internet was going to make printers a thing of the past. "I thought we were dead. I thought we were in real trouble," Cummings says.

Today, Cummings employs 107 people and has embraced the Internet for all that it can do for today's printer. For example, its Insite prepress portal system streamlines customer interactions, allowing customers, via Internet, to track job activity and status, proof print jobs, collaborate with Cummings staffers, and approve jobs.

During the past decade, change has been one constant for printers. "Printing industries are less of a trade now, and things are more push button," Cummings says. "What used to take an hour of a skilled artisan's time now takes 10 minutes of a person with computer savvy." Gone are the jobs of the linotype operators, film strippers and conventional printing plate makers Cummings says.

When asked what his grandfather would think of today's Cummings Printing, the grandson says, "I think he'd be sad from a trades perspective - that the trade is much less a part of the industry. But also being a good businessman, he'd be proud that we stayed with technology, we've been able to remain an industry leader, and we've been able to evolve from a commercial printer to being a publication printer."

The Technology Blessing and Curse

The late '90s digital revolution has threatened the printing industry, but it's also enabled printers to become more efficient by allowing them to cut legacy machinery costs, trim headcount, speed up customer interactions and job delivery, as well as offer a wider range of digital services. "We're able to handle any file you can throw at us: from Word files to Publisher files to InDesign and Quark - all the different types of [design] programs out them," says Kevin Boyarsky, co-owner of Print Solutions, a commercial printer in Concord with seven employees that offers one- to four-color offset printing, and digital duplication services. His customers also use FTP (file transfer protocol) Internet technology to transmit computer files to Print Solutions. Boyarsky estimates that typical turnaround times have been cut in half, down to less than a week, from 10 years ago.

But all those efficiencies reaped from new and faster technologies have come at a cost. "Copiers and digital machines that used to last five years are now almost obsolete after two, and they're expensive," Boyarsky says. "We constantly have to re-invest in the company. We have invested a significant amount of money upgrading software, and digital and offset capabilities."

Re-investment in new technologies is an economic reality for Cummings as well. "Either we buy this new piece of equipment, which is going to cost us a lot of money, or if we don't buy this, we won't be competitive," he says. 'The companies that didn't buy them and didn't take the calculated risks, they're hurting now."

Peter Church, owner of Keystone Press, LLC in Manchester agrees. The company spent a quarter of a million dollars this past summer to install two digital presses to improve printing quality and efficiency. "It's state-of-the-art today, but it will probably be outdated in five years, so we have to make it profitable quickly," Church says of the challenge of keeping up with technology advances. "There are two kinds of printers - those who are not keeping up with technology and those who embrace it, invest in it and evolve with it."

Shrinking Industry

The most recent data from Printing Indus-tries of New England (PINE) shows that the Granite State ranks second to Massachusetts in terms of value of shipments each year ($1.2 billion) as well as number of printing-related businesses (226). Printers employ more than 7,500 people in NH; most significantly in the Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth-Rochester areas, and the majority of the printing businesses have fewer Nan 20 employees, according to PINE.

At the national level, there's been a decrease of 200,000 printing industry jobs since 2000, according to an August 2007 report from the Rochester Institute of Technology. "Most of the decreases in employment can be accounted for by the increasing amount of automation present on printing presses and other printing equipment that traditionally had to be nm by hand," the report states.

The printing industry has long been known for its skilled craftsmen and artisans who worked the presses. But new technology has erased much of the need. "Highly skilled printing tradespeople aren't needed like they once were, and many of the skills that were once needed don't exist anymore," Cummings says. His business, for example, em-ploys 107 people, down from 165 six years ago. 'New technology has eliminated manpower and made it cheaper to run," he adds.

New Hampshire printers say that finding qualified people is difficult today. "There's plenty of people who apply for a job," Boyarsky of Print Solutions says. But there's not a lot of people qualified for the jobs."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report notes that many printers "have been having trouble finding qualified, trained workers to replace their retirees." In addition, there has been decreased enrollment in printing programs at colleges and other institutions across the United States. "Now that graphic design and other computer-based fields of study have become more popular, many graphic arts programs at high schools have been shut down due to a lack of participation," according to the report.

Boyarsky points to a troubling workforce gap in NH. "I don't think the people coming out of the schools necessarily have the skills because the focus isn't on the print side - it's more toward the Web," he says. And then there's the older people who came out of the old typesetting design, and they didn't upgrade their skills to the new technologies. So there is probably a gap in the number of qualified people."

New Hampshire printing executives all say that there are fewer printers in the state now than 10 to 15 years ago. But that doesn't necessarily mean that print is dying or there's any lack of competition. "I wouldn't say there's a dearth of printers around' Boyarsky says. "I think that the printers around have been able to do that same volume of work [when compared with I0 years ago], with less equipment because we am more efficient."

Church says his business is an example of the trends the industry will likely see more of in the future. He owned a smaller printing business when he acquired Keystone Press two and half years ago and merged the two businesses. "You will see a lot of that happening - two smaller companies merging to form a larger, more capable company," Church says. Keystone Press has 21 employees housed in an 8,000-square-foot facility in Manchester.

Challenges

New Hampshire printers are facing the same macroeconomic pressures as other industries face: economic belt-tightening and credit-market wariness, sky-high fuel and utility prices, and increases in health care costs. The printing industry, in particular, has witnessed steady price increases for paper and ink. The industry saw two rounds of price increases for most paper grades this year. "It used to be once every couple of years," Boyarsky says, "but it's now twice this year."

While there may be fewer local NH printers today, say printing executives, competition has only increased. A "survival of the fittest" mentality is apparent through digital printing trends, retraining or hiring employees with new skillsets, and investing in new technology. "There's a lot fewer players-" observes Frank Laguna, president of Papergraphics in Merrimack, a 14-person commercial printer founded in 1982. "But the equipment is more efficicntbecause there's more capacity, which leads to more healthy competition."

In 2000, Papergraphics was able to complete one or two color printing jobs in a day now the printer can do 10, he notes. An investment in a new HP Indigo 5000 digital press in 2007 has allowed Papergraphics to offer same day or next day turnaround on print jobs. That, in turn, has allowed Laguna to deliver short-run printing jobs simply not available just five years ago, he says.

Competition is not just about another printer in your town or one in the city 10 miles away. The Internet and its global networking reach have made any printer a local printer. Sophisticated venture capital-backed e-commerce printing Web sites are both technologically advanced (with design and other applications built in) and able to gain economies of scale that am tough to match - let alone beat - for some local printers, says Boyarsky. "I can't compete in that marketplace," he says. In addition, the desktop publishing revolution and its more user-friendly design software has enabled commercial and retail customers to do much of the work once resented for printers. "The common color copier being networked to a desktop has more bearing now [on the printing business]," Laguna says.

Church says customers are expecting more services, but for prices to remain stagnant. That's a challenge in an industry that is seeing its costs go up, he says. "You have to provide superior customer service," Church says, which will mean fewer customers bid-ding projects to other companies.

Lastly, the growing need to go "green" has affected some pieces of NH printers operations as well as their customer offerings. Boyarsky says that while "no printer can he totally green if they're doing offset printing," new innovations - such as assortments of recycled paper, soy-based inks and waterless presses - allow printers to be "as green as we can be with the technology were using."

Differentiate or Die

Even with the enormous army of challenges in front of them, NH printers are not hacking down. "When has this business ever not been competitive?" implores Cummings. "I've been here 31 years, and there's always some kind of competitive threat."

Print Solutions' Boyarsky says, in this economic climate, printers need to "look for other products and services to serve your clientele." For example, Print Solutions is looking at wide-format printos capable of producing outdoor banners and other types of large signage. "The machines have come down in price and become more friendly to the environment," he says. "That's enabled people to get into markets that otherwise they couldn't have."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report notes that many printers am attempting to reposition themselves as a communications or marketing partner and service provider as opposed to solely a print or commodity supplier. "Becoming a marketing partner or communications company involves going beyond taking print jobs to offering a wide range of print products and marketing solutions to consumers," states the report. "Thus, printing companies - manufacturers and suppliers alike - are striving to grow and sustain creativity and innovation to keep their competitive advantage in an industry faced with many challenges."

Church of Keystone Press says his company is increasingly working with marketing managers at companies where the company previously worked with purchasing agents. Church says he can help companies customize marketing pieces, such as a postcard campaign a company may be sending out. Keystone can individualize each postcard with customized photos and messages, and address them as they are printed.

Lisa Landry, president of Print Savvy in Manchester, agrees that targeted marketing and customization of printed pieces is the future of the industry. She points to Macy's, which developed a specific campaign for its bridal registry, as an example. After a couple was married, Macy's sent them a customized printed piece informing them of the items they did not receive on their registry and what's on sale. Landry says those customized pieces yielded a 70 percent return for Macy's. She says printers will need the capability to work with clients to deliver more pieces like that instead of flooding the market with a generic mass-marketing piece. "It will be more like harpooning. It's going to be targeted and specific," Landry says.

Print Savvy, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, has built its success on being a marketing partner with clients. The company manages printing projects for clients, finding printers with the appropriate technology to meet their specific needs. "We act as a sales and customer service office for printing facilities across the country," Landry says. That means Print Savvy can find printers with the latest technology, without having to bear the cost of investing in that technology itself, Landry says. It's a model that has worked well as clients' needs become more sophisticated, "If you have a sales tool kit with multiple components, there may be no one printer that could handle every piece," Landry says.

Printers say they are leaning on good old-fashioned customer service to compete - listening to what customers want and need, and helping them navigate through all the options available today - something that many of the online sites can't do. "A lot of times we get those clients who used an Internet site back - the card was wrong, there was no customer service, or they waited three weeks for a card and didn't get it," says Boyarsky. "I try to work with clients, understand their business and be able to provide a solution that fits with them. And it's hard to do that over the Internet."

The Rochester Institute of Technology report is cautionary about the future. "Print's long and illustrious history tells us that printing will remain. However, the form in which it will remain, the size of the industry and the types of output that will be produced are all things that no one can precisely predict." Boyarsky, however, is resolute. "I think that the business has definitely shaken out, but there am clients who still need printing," he says. "There's still a good future for print. A lot of it is that you have to be up on your technology to survive. You can't just muddle along with old equipment and old ways of doing things."

HP Partners with Timsons on New Digital Inkjet System for Book Production

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP has announced a partnership with U.K.-based Timsons, the world's largest book press manufacturer, to develop a digital inkjet system for short- and medium-run book production. According to HP, the new solution will be designed "to take digital book production beyond niche applications to mainstream production."

Next year, European book printer CPI will be installing an HP Inkjet Web Press—which at 2,600 ppm is slated to be the most productive digital press for the publishing industry, according to HP—with a new finishing system developed by Timsons that will enable CPI to offer short- and medium-run book production. CPI is a beta user of the press, which is to become commercially available in the second half of 2009.

“Our collaboration with Timsons is a natural next step in HP’s strategy to move higher volumes of printing from analog to digital,” says Aurelio Maruggi, vice president and general manager, Inkjet High-speed Production Solutions, HP. “The digital book solution coming from this work will open a range of new possibilities to help printers and publishers optimize their supply chains, decrease waste and create revenue opportunities.”

“Timsons is excited to establish this partnership, as it offers a complementary opportunity to the book manufacturers Timsons has served for more than 30 years, with innovative new solutions to help our customers capture the momentum that exists with digital,” says Jeff Ward, managing director, Timsons Ltd. “Timsons is extending its business by offering more choices to our customers with short- to medium-run book solutions and by partnering with HP to gain the benefit of HP’s digital leadership credentials.”

5 Better Inventory-Management Tips for Book Publishers

Mike Shatzkin, founder and CEO of New York-based The Idea Logical Company, offered book publishers a number of tips on making more intelligent inventory-management decisions at the 2008 Publishing Business Conference in New York. A better approach starts with regularly collecting and analyzing data that is available to each and every publisher, he said.

“Most of the major accounts to which publishers sell will provide you with data that will enable you to know what’s going on between your warehouse door and the end consumer, if you choose to know,” Shatzkin said. “And that information can be very, very useful both to increase your sales and to reduce your inventory exposure.”

In the hour-long session, Shatzkin offered a wealth of advice to the room of book publishers. Here are just five of his tips from the presentation.

1. It is not the unit cost of what you print that matters, it is the unit cost of what you sell.
This advice, said Shatzkin, came from his late father. The point? If you print books that you don’t sell, you’re not saving any money -- an important thing to keep in mind.

2. Get weekly feeds from your major accounts.
Collecting this data once a month is not often enough, Shatzkin says. Be sure you’re getting the information on a weekly basis. Possessing this data from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Baker & Taylor, Ingram and Amazon can give you a sense of “a substantial percentage of the inventory that’s in the supply chain -- well north of 50 percent, because independent stores aren’t holding that much inventory anymore,” Shatzkin said.

3. Once this data is being collected and organized, analyze it.
First, examine by account what their sell-through is by title. Then, on a quarterly basis by account, look at stock turn and inventory by section for your retailers. Also, track both sales and stock on a weekly basis.

4. Identify spikes.
Identify books that are selling beyond expectations. Keep an eye out for those “fast movers,” said Shatzkin.

5. Identify future returns.
These are the books with high stock and low sell-through. Look at your top 25 books in inventory at Barnes & Noble and Borders. If you see, for example, 1-percent sell-through on a title, “you can be sure that that’s a future problem,” Shatzkin said. “You might want to start to address it early, and you certainly want to address it if your own warehouse is short of [that title] and you might be reprinting. So it’s a very important thing to watch both your highs and your lows.”

Facing Today’s Manufacturing Woes

(By Alex Brown of Publishing Executive)

Publishers are being buffeted by cost increases on all fronts, and while there are no magic wands to wave, we can gather round to share our sorrows and consider a few basic cost-control tactics.

The latest blow is a 10-percent to 12-percent increase in ink prices announced by ink suppliers. Printers will differ in their implementation of this, but if yours is delivering bad news in the form of higher prices, you can accept it as a true reflection of the market. The costs of raw materials and freight have indeed affected the selling price of ink.

Your printer may spare you this increase, or you may hear of another publisher that has gone unscathed. There are good reasons for printers to differ in applying ink escalations.

First, some printers have an ownership interest in an ink supplier. They can let overall business strategy rule their decision on a price hike, and they can do it customer by customer.

Second, printers that are not tangentially in the ink business vary in the markup they initially impose on the ink they sell to you. Once again, a critical customer relationship may be important enough for a printer to absorb some or all of the escalation blow, particularly if he has a comfortable markup to cushion it.

Third, printers sometimes delay imposing an escalation. Your vendor may not be sending out the bad news quite yet, but it doesn’t mean you’re off scot-free.

Finally, ink costs generally represent 5 percent to 8 percent of a manufacturing invoice, not including paper. With today’s tight margins, that’s a significant amount, but printers may still have some negotiating room.

With all this in mind, the smart print buyer will look at a change in ink prices as an opportunity for negotiation. But tread carefully: The printer’s costs really are going up. What you’re negotiating is how much it will affect you. Keep your guns in their holsters and start out with sympathy for the printer’s situation. Then look for a fair way to absorb the rising price together.

The greater the printer’s ink markup, the more leeway it has for giving the publisher a break. You can look for a compromise on a lower percentage increase or a delay in its effective date.

The Bigger Problem: Paper
The ink increase, however it finally hits you, is small potatoes compared to the rise in paper prices. Mills are generally announcing a $50/ton increase for the third quarter, but with demand so weak, there’s reason to hope this will work its way down to the $30/ton zone.

The overall message, however, is clear: The mills want to keep hiking prices to compensate for the increases in their own costs, and they are not letting low demand dictate price policy. What they don’t get in July, they may well try for in October.

The wise paper buyer needs to understand that the mills are driven by two loud voices in their ears. First, the rising costs of energy and transportation are affecting mills, and price increases are necessary just to tread water. Second, strict profit goals are in place at all mills today, with the sternest tests at those held by private equity investors. The days of waiting out a market downturn or sharing a customer’s burden are over. If you can’t make money selling paper today, you shut down the mill and take your capital elsewhere. The lost jobs and lost customers don’t have a place in the equation.

The classic cost-control move when paper prices go up is to downgrade specifications. Cutting basis weight, trim size or paper grade are still useful moves, but not every square on the chess board is open.

Mills have gotten pesky about making basis weights they consider less profitable, and the spectrum of paper types is shrinking as mills consolidate. The nastiest news is the closure of Katahdin Paper’s supercalendared (SC) machine, announced for July. The loss of 180,000 annual tons of SC will mean that buyers trying to downgrade from grade 5 won’t find SCA easily. In turn, SCA shoppers may have to upgrade, making the price increase that much more likely to stick.

Meanwhile, our favorite price safety valve—importing paper—doesn’t work anymore. Mill consolidations have put a distinctly global face on the paper market, so there’s no more exploiting small pockets of unbalanced supply and demand. Globalization levels such anomalies. The weak dollar undercuts our buying power, so we can’t pit imports against domestics. And even if we could, shipping costs would gobble up all the savings.

The rising cost of fuel sits at the center of all the price increases swirling around us. You see it in fuel surcharges for overnight mail, the petroleum components in ink, postal increases, and freight allocations for paper shipments. And it’s buried only a little deeper in the power used to make paper and run presses. In short, the cost of a barrel of oil ripples through every manufacturing move we make.

Because this is affecting all publishers, all printers and all consumers, a price increase is easy to justify. But it’s going to be hard to collect. The hard-pressed consumer will resist, and publishers tremble at giving readers any reason to say no to a subscription renewal or a newsstand purchase. And raising ad rates can be equally perilous.

Printers in a Bind
There’s another constituency with nearly the same problem. Printers are hit directly with increases in operating costs, but customer demand is flat or falling, making it tough to impose increases that could drive demand still lower.

The prevailing price for printing is riding on some very gusty winds. Pushing it down is low demand that forces printers to compete hard for every job that can keep the presses turning. Pushing it up is the reduction in competition from a shrinking pool of vendors. With their own costs rising and profit pressures mounting, printers are twitching their escalation trigger fingers. If ever there was a textbook time when print prices should rise, this is it.

Or is it? A healthy publisher can absorb an increase in print prices, but a weakened one will switch to digital delivery. If there’s a large economic message here, it’s that making and moving printed pages is inefficient compared to putting images on screens—so much so that the current wave of increases in every manufacturing cost center should be enough to drive a lot of printing demand away.

Printers can scale down their capacity to compensate, but it’s not going to be an orderly march that publishers and catalogers lead. For now, printers must try to retain customers who can flee not just to another printer, but to another medium. Setting print prices has never been harder. Should prices be high enough to let printers evolve into artisans serving a micro-market? Low enough to prevent the market from shrinking that small? Or some spot in the middle that might, at least, prolong current conditions?

The tough lesson is that doing nothing won’t allow things to stay the same. Oil prices aren’t going to return to 20th-century levels, so this cost gauntlet we’re running through right now is not a drill. New energy sources will rewrite our economic equations, but all the variables in the formula will change, too. Printers will have to evolve even more than publishers.

For now, however, your printer will try to pass along the increases he’s experienced through your contract’s escalation provision. You can respond by negotiating an advance renewal that could lead to a price reduction or, if you’re at the end of the contract term, soliciting competitive bids. There’s no guarantee you’ll find the types of bargains we’ve seen for so many years, but it’s crucial to try. Opportunities still exist in a market with excess capacity, but they don’t drop into your lap.

Today, there’s nothing a publisher purchases that isn’t affected by energy costs. But the still larger wave running through the economy is the uncertainty about what major energy and environmental changes will mean to buying decisions. It’s impossible to forecast trends too vast to detect, but we know they’re at work, and we’ll slowly shift with them. It may be small comfort, but every business and every consumer is similarly affected. We’re all in this together.