[PhantomGremlin]

That best-seller for the price of $12 is based on thousands of copies, many times printed in china and shipped by container loads.

I think this is key. I'm quite disappointed that the NYT didn't mention China in the article.

A lot of high volume stuff is printed in China and takes the slow boat here. Domestic printers couldn't compete on price with that. So now they no longer have the onshore capability to print large numbers of books here.

This is Economics 101.

The article literally says “All of the sudden, there’s just no capacity”, and follows with "One large printing company, Edward Brothers Malloy, shut down this summer."

Well, duh. The publishers switched to printing in China. So what the fuck were domestic printers supposed to do?