"Picture a reader of a large-print book. Many associations would be perfectly resonable based on the category's historical customer base...But as baby boomers continue to age, the makeup of the audience for books with larger, easier-to-read type is diversifying, and so are its tastes..." opens the new Publishers Weekly article titled, "Seeing the Big Picture."

The article goes on to discuss how new technologies are also changing the large print publishing industry. One change that is discussed is how more simultaneous releases are available because of print on demand technology. Quoting ReadHowYouWant's Maureen Watts: "It used to routinely take three to six months—and in some cases still does—for large-print editions to hit the marketplace, says Watts. But increasingly, readers can purchase books in the type size they want as soon as they become available in any edition. In March, RHYW did a simultaneous release of Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage by Raquel Welch, who appeared with Oprah on the book's pub date. The simultaneous release meant that in addition to the standard edition, readers could get the title from RHYW in 16-point, 16-point bold, 18-point, 20-point, or 24-point formats."

Another question posed by this article is what effect ebooks will have on large print books. Because ebook readers allow for readers to increase the font size they see on the screen, and usually have some sort of text-to-speech program, is the demand for large print titles decreasing? While the article draws the conclusion that the sales of large print books will not be effected by ebooks because traditionally large print readers have not been early adopters of technology, ReadHowYouWant founder, Christoper Stephen "believes there could be great potential in the e-reader to open up the availability of books to even more people. The sheer number of titles available and the competitive pricing of e-books are big advantages e-readers can offer, he says. But he would like to see publishers converting books into other accessible formats such as DAISY, synthesized audio MP3, and into e-book formats besides EPub and Kindle to provide a wider range of options to readers with accessibility issues. In addition to its print editions, RHYW is already working with publishers to convert works into a variety of popular e-book formats."

The final section of the article is dedicated to the increase of YA novels in large print. Each section of this article focused on a different topic that is currently important to the large print publishing industry. A number of large print publishers are featured throughout. This article would be very educational to anyone interested in large print books.

To read the full article, click here.