The US-based operation has a business model based on a print run of one, with its average run length is 1.8 books. Local chief is Paul Glasgow, who says most of the company’s work here are from existing accounts in the US and UK.

The company plans for rapid growth from the Melbourne plant, which has started with a staff of ten.

The Melbourne plant will service the whole of the Asia Pacific region. By early 2010, Lightning Sources’ US and UK branches were printing 1.5 million books a month.

Its complete catalogue totalled 1.6 million titles from more than 11,000 publishing clients, drawn from a mixture of professional publishers and self publishers.

Lightening Source becomes the second major US online print business to open for business in Australia recently, following the successful launch of Vistaprint, also located in Melbourne last year.

Vistaprint targets the micro business world, and prints on a manroland 700 and an HP Indigo, ganging ultra small run jobs that are sent to plate through a totally automated workflow.

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