Printing question

My understanding is that there are very few printing houses in the US (and maybe Canada) capable of producing mass-market paperbacks, and these few do all the printing for all the publishers. The printing is not in-house, even in the big publishers.

The small press that I worked with (now defunct) used a POD printer for their trade paperbacks. I'm not sure anymore which one (the publisher was in Ohio and the printer was in Louisana, IIRC), but there's many around.

Maybe someone has more specific information.

most tender out to specialist printers. If you look inside the flap of a book you will often see 'Printed and bound in the United Kindom by xxxxxxx'

It's more cost effecitve to do it this way

Outsourcing is the new business model, so it seems.

A couple of the large ones still do in-house printing. Most use outsourcing.

Almost all printing is done outside; there are about four large Web press (has nothing to do with the World Wide Web) in the East that do almost all trade paperback printing.

These high-speed presses can do large thousands of copies print runs in hours. Slots are booked six months to a year in advance.