"Print" is not one single thing, nor a single industry. Printing a book may be using partly the same processes as printing a newspaper, but as anyone in the industry can tell you, they are different. So is the future of print.
Part of the key is to consider the durability of the information that is being printed. There is a reason why newspapers are moving away from paper: why bother to print something which is old tomorrow? When you create something that is intended to inform and then be thrown away, why give it a physical form when there are better ways - such as PC:s and ebook readers. Just geting rid of the print process saves time and gives the journalists some extra minutes, until they realize that there are no deadlines - everything can be continously updated all the time. Here, print is squeezed out by being too expensive, compared to alternative means of updating information.
It may be profitable to create special event publications, but it is doubtful. The volume has to be large if it is to work for the printer (see below), and someone has to pay. For theatrical programs and the like, you may still be able to get people to pay, but for events where advertisers are expected to bear the cost, it is doubtful for another reason: Advertisers are being squeezed from another direction, the mass-market advertising no longer paying off in the face of more and more individualized (and not more expensive) options. They are unlikely to be interested in sponsoring a special publication unless that can be used to create a positive association with them in some way (like, if you sell to gays, it makes sense to sponsor the special publication for the pride parade). Subscriptions may be another way, but few people are interested enough even to pay for the work that goes into creating a publication. It would have to be an official institution, like the local governement, that would pay. Not very likely, if they can get the same coverage in a TV channel or the Internet.
The other cost squeeze on print comes from another direction. Most universities no longer request students to buy textbooks - they give them the relevant chapters, which they buy electronically from the publishers. If they do not bypass them, too. Printing textbooks, which used to be a huge industry, is dying out (the good news for a company like HP is that students print out the books instead). But here, as well, the ebook reader will probably make an impact.
There are few profitable niches in printing today, the few that are left are those which work with shorter batches and higher quality. Which does not necessarily mean higher resolution, since an HDTV delivers images which are undistinguishable from print. Posters, up to 40 inch size, is another business disappearing. There is no way to update them to increase sales, even if they still are cheaper than TV sets, they will increasingly move towards being decorations.
To be profitable, print runs have to be longer, amortizing the machines of the printer (the labor cost per each, the ink and paper, are the same - although paper is becoming more expensive, as is ink). But customers want shorter print runs, since things change. You can no longer count on being able to use a thousand business cards with the same title - even the company name may change. Or the owner of the cards no longer be in the company.
If printing is moving away from mass production, what is a printer to do? Printing other things is not that easy. Printing on coffee cups is a very different processs from printing on paper. You do not switch that easily.
One solution is for the printer to recognize that they are not just coloring a two-dimensional surface any more. Print can be used to create threedimensional objects equally easy. More post-processing also helps - stuffing envelopes automatically, for instance.
But even if a printer can make a living by creating more advanced printed goods (competing with plastics molding, probably, in some way - many plastics goods could equally well be paper, and paper is cheaper. Folding instead of molding does not require much in terms of process modification.
The professional printing industry needs to find other ways to make a living. But even if printing small batches or individual print runs on office printers are going to increase in the short term, as people use it as an alternative display and alternatives to industrially printed books and newspapers, that industry is going to be squeezed, too. Ebook readers will simply be a too convenient alternative for people who want to carry documents - you do not have to print out many hundred pages before the weight of the paper is more than the weight of the ebook. And of course, a company can encrypt the content and put password protection on them - the risk that someone forgets a secret document somewhere will be much less.
So the traditional printing industry need to find a way of reinventing itself as well. Already, printers are faxes and scanners. Bur why can they not fold papers, put them in envelopes, address and stamp them? The mechanics may seem daunting, but so did inkjet printing fifteen years ago.
Because they have some time: Print will not go away at once, any more than digital photography has squeezed out the professional photographers. There will be a point, however, when we will - when looking back - be able to say "this was the moment the ebook reader killed the printer". But only being cheaper is not enough. Just consider two other revolutions: The fax machine replacing the telex, and email replacing the fax.
Fax machines, if you remember, were a great thing when they came, not because they were cheaper than the telex (the first were more expensive than telex terminals), or because they were cheaper to use (30 year ago, international phone calls were often more expensive than telex lines). Nor were they faster at the time. They took hold because they had two added advantages: No installation, and graphics.
You did not have to order a special fax line (although some operators did try to sell you one). You just plugged it into the phone jack, and it worked. And it gave you a picture. You could draw on it, and you could see peoples signatures (my bank, for this very reason, just recently asked me to fax a letter to them). And you did have about the same level of security as telex (not quite, which is why telex is still used for international money transfers occasionally). When the price started going down (as japanese companies discovered the advantage and applied technologies for point-of-sale printers to it), the fax took off. The first stage, up until the famous gap, was fuelled by a number of advantages that drove the creation of a machine which could find a mass market, which in turn drove the advantage past the geeks and into the early adopters, and the rest is history.
The replacement of fax with email is not quite as easy to map onto the S-curve. But it does fit there. And the reason it does, is that it also shows that lower cost does not automatically translate to adaption.
Sending images in emails have been possible for many years. But there was a security problem, not addressed until encyption became widespread. And then, the convenience came to the fore. As always, convenience is the killer app. Getting the messages to your own mailbox means you did not have to wrestle with curly fax rolls, or the faxes getting lost in the mail room, or that you had to try to read when the ink run out. It meant you could get the pictures in color, and higher resolution, and use in your own documents easy. And it was cheaper - because the email was already there, and the cost for it a sunk cost that could be used to cut the cost for telephone calls. But it was the additional advantages which drove it, not the conveniences (because the fax machine was already there, and a sunk cost too).
So it is not until they have some additional advantages that ebook readers will replace print. That will not happen immediately. The advantages - especially cost advantages - are already enough to start the industry, but it is not until they get all the advantages of paper, and then some, that they will replace print. That means the ability to make free-form notes - an additional advantage being able to send them to others, so they can overlay them on their documents. Preferrably in a way where you could overlay many different peoples notes and see them at the same time. It means the ability to enlarge the view - something anyone who has started to become older will appreiciate.
If manufacturing costs come down enough, the replacement will be automatic, of course. If you go to a conference today, you will rarely receive a CD anymore (printed documentation went long ago), but a USB memory. It is not hard to think that they will be replaced by ebook readers at some point. That is when print will finally have lost.
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