Here's a publishing thing we don't talk about much in the publishing Twittersphere: paper supply and demand.

You might notice that the prices of your books might be going up in the next year, and it all comes down to one thing: paper for books is getting harder to come by. https://www.pubexec.com/post/2019-print-forecast-tight-paper-market-will-continue-squeezing-publishers/ …

Most editors aren't hands-on re: paper supplies so they aren't tweeting about it; that's the job at most houses for managing editorial and/or production. At small presses, though, we wear many hats.

One of my jobs in my editorial process is to request a manufacturing quote from our production manager, who sends the print-run pricing back to me, which I send to our company president, who uses that number to confirm book pricing.

This year, as the article I linked above notes, there's been a perfect storm of global events/trends to change how the paper manufacturers prioritize what papers they make/what orders they'll fill. We and pretty much every publisher printing domestically ran into it this year.

I hadn't realized it, but the backlash against plastic noted in the article (or one like it--see the following link) is an interesting domino to have fallen in this situation: the backlash against plastic in packaging materials, fast food packaging, other shipping/packaging--

--means that paper manufacturers found they could suddenly make more money on cheaper paper products than fine book paper. They deprioritized the publishing industry. https://www.printweek.com/print-week/briefing/1164589/forecast-worsening-for-paper-supply …

Add to that other global factors affecting the production of paper, and the dominoes fall to eventually mean that publishers trying to print books and magazines are running into supply delays and printing delays as a result, and higher paper prices on top of everything.

It's the kind of behind-the-scenes supply-and-demand stuff that even we editors don't really pay attention to until suddenly our publication dates get moved around because suddenly the printer says, "We don't have that paper you ordered six months ago..." etc.

It's been a crazy year in paper, apparently.

Guys: The number of people who think this is about trees, not the decision-making processes of paper manufacturers, is baffling. I'm not saying we're running out of trees. I'm saying paper plants have closed, and others have retooled to make other kinds of paper from trees.

Suggesting e-books, hemp, etc are the solution to what is a manufacturing issue are derailments (though hemp would be a lovely sustainable solution we should be discussing in another conversation).

You can follow @stacylwhitman.

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