Oops department: Esquire’s “Augmented Reality” December cover with Quick Response barcode encountered a glitch: mailing labels blocked the scannable code intended to send readers’ cellphones and laptops online. Retail copies worked okay.

Visant Corp., Armonk, NY, reports Q3 sales of printed memory books posted a 4% sales gain to $77.7 million, while overall sales fell 8% to $235.9 million; income was $800,00 compared to a consolidated net loss of $1.9 million in the prior year's quarter. For more>>
 

Sales fell 3.75% at privately held firms with $10 million or less in revenue, says a Sageworks study; businesses cut ads and payroll to survive. PIA’s Print Market Update said print sales fell 4.75% through June; 61+% of printers cut staff, 28% expect to hire, 73% don’t, by June 30, 2010.  PIA CEO Mike Makin says 73,000 printers lost their jobs July 1 08-June 30 09.  

Printing supply group NPES reports “a slight drop” in equipment buys, citing Equipment Data Associtates figures on equipment bought or leased in 2009:· 2,990 production digital color printers;  341 sheetfed presses;  1,407 wide-format printers,  768 platesetters and 249 folder/gluers.

Kodak releases the first Prosper Press samples as part of RIT’s new Test Target 9.0 Report. A “Benchmarking Color Image Quality between Inkjet and Offset” section has side-by-side comparison pages of offset and Kodak Prosper 5000XL inkjet color web press output. A webcast on the Stream inkjet technology behind Prosper is available online.

The U.S. Small Business Administration will create a secondary market guarantee program to provide greater liquidity for lenders and expand access to capital for small businesses. For more>>

BookPal, Irvine, CA, reports a Q3 sales spike of over f over 400%; the company couples discounted bulk book pricing with quick deliver of millions of always in-stock titles. For more>>