SIC 2791 Typesetting
SIC 2791
This classification includes establishments primarily engaged in typesetting for the trade, including advertising typesetting, hand or machine composition, photocomposition, phototypesetting, computer-controlled typesetting, and typographic composition.
323122
Prepress Services
In 2006, the U.S. prepress services industry had revenue of $3.1 billion, down from $3.53 billion in 1997. The industry employed 26,700 people, 70 percent of whom were production workers. The value of U.S. exports was more than double that of imports, with 2006 shipments totaling $34.5 million and $14.2 million, respectively.
By the mid-2000s, the typesetting industry had been revolutionized by electronic technology, resulting in frequently upgraded equipment, redefined job functions, retraining of workers, and expansion of services provided to clients. New technology allowed faster turnaround on jobs, and typesetting companies were under pressure to continue to improve their equipment for even faster results.
The growing popularity of desktop publishing enabled many of typesetting's traditional clients to produce their own newsletters, advertising, and other print materials instead of contracting with typesetters for the work. Many organizations and businesses, however, elected not to become their own publishers and continued to contract with typesetters and other preprint services. With the burst of personal computers at home and in businesses, many producers of printed materials used a combination of their own computer-based technology and outside typesetting services. Typesetting in the mid-2000s remained an essential service industry for book publishers, magazine publishers, advertising agencies, catalog companies, and other large and small businesses.
The typesetting industry includes large, multimillion dollar shops with several hundred employees as well as small shops with only a few employees. Many of the larger companies offer related services, including printing, bookbinding, development, and sales of custom computer systems for desktop publishing or typesetting to client companies. Large typesetting companies may also specialize in certain markets, such as producing catalogs for car parts companies, textbooks, trade paperbacks, financial reports, and so on.
Jobs that come into typesetting establishments must be compatible with the typesetting system. Creating this compatibility can be complex. Typesetting companies accept word processing disks from clients and convert them for use on their own systems. With the new flexibility—but potential incompatibility—of increasingly sophisticated systems, software, and hardware, the typesetting shop may enter the publishing process sooner than it had in the past. With electronic capabilities, the client and typesetting shop may test various formats and styles before actually doing the typesetting job to make sure that the two systems will work together without glitches, and to be sure that the client's word processing control codes can automatically be converted to phototypesetting control codes. Most of the code conversion can be done automatically, with the typesetting operator making few decisions other than those concerning hyphenation, justification, and final output.
Desktop systems offer "what you see is what you get" technology. That is, the screen displays the text and layout exactly as it will appear on the finished page. Commercial digitized typesetting equipment...
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