post scriptum
xtra Time lapse ao ano 2021 e consequências da crise do consumo. Continuamos da Mundo Fantasma para teaser, acrescentamos dizeres para arquivo.
Uma consequência não prevista da pandemia foi a escassez de algumas matérias primas e o caos nos transportes. A resposta a ambas na sociedade em que vivemos, é um aumento de preços ao que agora se juntam os combustíveis e sabe-se lá que mais [...] e enquanto esperamos, vemos os preços a subir em flecha. O papel encareceu cerca de 50%, a Image anunciou o fim das segundas edições e a maior parte das editoras tem agora várias semanas ou meses de atraso na publicação planeada.
in "As reservas e assinaturas" 11 nov 2021
Extrapolando dos comics à sociedade que vivemos.
Supplies are way, way down.
Right now, publishers and printing companies have to pay more for the paper that makes up any given book, more for the ink that prints the words in the book, more for the time at a printing company to get the book printed, and more for the labor to staff the press to get the book produced. Paper, ink, and printing presses are all at a premium right now.
in The great book shortage of 2021, explained 6 out 2021
The great book shortage of 2021, explained 6 out 2021
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has been exacerbating existing problems in the global supply chain for nearly two years now. (...) Here are the major issues leading up to the great book shortage of 2021.
It's getting more complicated (and expensive) to physically make books.
i) The paper shortage begins with the wood pulp shortage. An environmental initiative in China that shut down 279 pulp and paper mills as one of the major drivers behind the spike in pricing, as well as a global backlash against plastic and the rush to replace plastic products with paper alternatives. ii) Meanwhile, with shoppers increasingly ordering products online, the price of cardboard in which to ship goods has gone up with demand. So paper factories have begun to invest more in producing cardboard, shifting their resources away from making book-grade paper in the process. iii) A shortage of raw materials is also wreaking havoc in the inks market. The same Chinese environmental initiative that led to a shortage of wood pulp has also led to decreased availability of resins, monomers, photo initiators, oligomers, and additives. Moreover, ink manufacturers are rapidly consolidating. All of these issues combined means ink prices are steadily rising. iv) Printing presses, meanwhile, are scrambling. The cause dates back more than a decade. In 2008, presses faced what appeared to be an existential crisis: the Great Recession on the one hand and the advent of the Amazon Kindle ebook reader on the other. Many in the industry predicted that printed books would soon be obsolete, and companies began to de-invest in printing books.
It's getting harder to ship books.
Right now, distribution networks across the world are massively congested. Containers are not moving out of ports and onto trains quickly enough. Even more pressing, however, is a shortage of truck drivers. There just aren't enough trucks on the road. And as stuff sits in warehouses, waiting to be picked up by increasingly scarce truck drivers, the price of storage goes up, adding to overall shipping costs.
Underlying all these issues is the increasingly dire labor shortage.
One of the big underlying problems when it comes to printing and shipping books is the same labor shortaget that's currently roiling the rest of the country. There aren't enough press operators to get books printed, and then there aren't enough truck drivers to get them to bookstores. (...) The working-age population (...) has stopped growing [and] in general, people with college degrees prefer not to work in warehouses, as truck drivers, or in printing presses. As Covid-19 spread, many people preferred not to work in the close quarters of a factory or warehouse, or in a job that required as much in-person interaction as making deliveries.
E funny stuff:
Reading is one of the hobbies that people have started to pick up over the course of the pandemic. And overwhelmingly, they're reading printed books, not ebooks.
in The great book shortage of 2021, explained 6 out 2021