In New Zealand everyone prints on SRA3 sheets, 320 by 450 millimetres, and probably 99 percent of digital work runs through that format. The machines don’t know they’re in New Zealand. They’re built for the whole world, so they’ll take a 13 by 19 inch sheet, and almost nobody here ever loads one. The book trade is heavily influenced by America, so one of the most popular sizes is a 6 by 9 inch book. On an SRA3 sheet you cannot print four 6 by 9 inch books, you can only print two. On a 13 by 19 inch sheet you can print four 6 by 9 inch books at the same time. So it costs half as much if you have a 10 percent larger paper size, and it takes half the running time.
I imported bulky book paper from Austria, and I imported it at 13 by 19 inches so that it was the maximum size I could put through the machines.
The rest of this essay is in Marketing Curious.
