Print on demand (POD) is a
printing technology and business process in which new copies of a
book (or other document) are not printed until an order has been
received, which means books can be printed one at a time. While
build to order has been an established business model in many other
industries, "print on demand" developed only after
digital printing began,[1]
because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional
printing technology such as
letterpress and
offset printing.
Many traditional
small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment
with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service
providers. Many
academic publishers, including
university presses, use POD services to maintain a large
backlist; some even use POD for all of their publications.[2]
Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as
reprinting older titles that are out of print or for performing test
marketing.[3]
Book publishing
Print on demand with digital technology is used as a way of printing
items for a fixed cost per copy, regardless of the size of the order.
While the unit price of each physical copy printed is higher than with
offset printing, the average cost is lower for very small print
runs, because setup costs are much higher for offset printing.
POD has other business benefits besides lower costs (for small runs):
- Technical set-up is usually quicker than for offset printing.
- Large inventories of a book or print material do not need to be
kept in stock, reducing storage, handling costs, and inventory
accounting costs.
- There is little or no waste from unsold products.
These advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books
and prints and can lead to increased choice for consumers. However, the
reduced risks for the publisher can also mean that quality control is
less rigorous than usual.
Other publishing
Digital technology is ideally suited to publish small print runs of
posters (often as a single copy) when they are needed. The introduction
of
UV-curable inks and media for
large format
inkjet printers has allowed artists, photographers and owners of
image collections to take advantage of print on demand. For example, the
National Gallery, London installed a print on demand system in July
2003. The system increased the number of images available as prints from
60 to 2,500.
Some companies specialize in POD booklets, catalogs, and/or
magazines. It is not yet commercially viable for single copies on
newsprint or newspapers.
Service providers
The introduction of POD technologies and business-models has fueled a
range of new book-creation and publishing opportunities. The innovation
in this space is currently clustered around three categories of
offerings
Self-publishing authors
POD fuels a new category of publishing (or printing) company that
offers services directly to authors who wish to
self-publish, usually for a fee. These services generally include
printing and shipping a book each time one is ordered, handling
royalties and getting listings in online bookstores. The initial
investment for POD services is usually less expensive for small
quantities of books when compared with self-publishing that uses
print runs. Often other services are offered as well: formatting,
proof reading and editing, and so on. Such companies typically do not
spend their own money on marketing, unlike traditional publishers. Some
POD Players are focused on serving this author segment. Their offerings
are tailored to
disintermediate classic publishers (such as Penguin, McGraw Hill).
For authors who wish to design and promote their work themselves, POD
companies focus on the low-service, low-cost end of the market.[citation
needed]
For authors, the potential benefits of POD publishing are several.
They include editorial independence, speed to market, ability to revise
content, and greater share of royalties kept compared with traditional
publishing.
POD
enablement platforms
While amateur/professional writers are targeted as early adopters by
players like
Infinity Publishing and
Trafford Publishing, there is an effort now to make POD more
mass-market. A class of horizontal technology platforms like
Lulu,
Blurb, Peecho and
QooP have chosen to be "author agnostic" and drive POD technology
across the chasm, extending from its early adopter writers, to a broad
mass-market of ordinary citizens who may want to express, record and
print keepsake copies of memories and personal writing (diaries,
travelogues, wedding journals, baby books, family reunion reports etc.).
Instead of tailoring themselves to the classic book format (100+ pages,
mostly text, complex rules around copyrights and royalties), these new
platforms strive to make POD more mass-market by creating tools/APIs
within which a range of different text and picture entry systems can be
transferred into a POD paradigm, and delivered back to the consumer as
finished books. The management of copyrights and royalties is often less
important in this market, as the books themselves have a narrow audience
(close family and friends, for instance), and the real value proposition
is around the ability to get a physical copy of a digital journal, blog,
or picture-collection.
The major photo storage services (e.g.
Kodak's
Ofoto and
Shutterfly and
HP's
Snapfish) have included the ability to produce picture books and
calendars. However, they focus on monetizing digital photography. Blurb
and Lulu bring this paradigm to a larger volume of creative work
(primarily text, as written in personal blogs), and include the
capability to embed photographs, and other media. QooP and Peecho take
on the role of an infrastructure service provider, allowing any partner
website to leverage its pre-designed payment and printing functions.
Next to an API, Peecho provides an embeddable print button, very similar
to a "Facebook Like".
As of 2006, print on demand book publishing is growing in popularity.
In the consumer market, this growth is especially strong among
first-time authors as an affordable and easy way to get a book into
print.
Publisher use
Print-on-demand services that offer printing and distributing
services to
publishing companies (instead of directly to
self-publishing authors) are also growing in popularity within the
industry.
Maintaining
availability
Among traditional publishers, POD services can be used to make sure
that books remain available when one print run has sold out, but another
has not yet become available. This maintains the availability of older
titles whose future sales may not be great enough to justify a further
conventional print run. This can be useful for publishers with large
backlists, where sales for individual titles may be low, but where
cumulative sales may be significant.
Managing
uncertainty
Print on demand can be used to reduce risk when dealing with "surge"
titles that are expected to have large sales but a short sales life
(such as celebrity biographies or event tie-ins): these titles represent
high profitability but also high risk owing to the danger of
inadvertently printing many more copies than are necessary, and the
associated costs of maintaining excess inventory or pulping. POD allows
a publisher to exploit a short "sales window" with minimized risk
exposure by "guessing low" - using cheaper conventional printing to
produce enough copies to satisfy a more pessimistic forecast of the
title's sales, and then relying on POD to make up the difference.
Niche publications
Print on demand is also used to print and reprint "niche" books that
may have a high retail price but limited sales opportunities, such as
specialist academic works. An academic publisher may be expected to keep
these specialist titles in print even though the target market is almost
saturated, making further conventional print runs uneconomic.
Many of the smallest small presses, often called micro-presses
because they have inconsequential profits, have become heavily reliant
on POD technology and
ebooks. This is either because they serve such a small market that
print runs would be unprofitable or because they are too small to absorb
much financial risk.
Variable formats
Print on demand also allows for books to be printed in a variety of
formats. This process, known as
accessible publishing, allows books to be printed in a variety of
larger fonts, special formats for those with vision impairment or
reading disabilities, as well as personalised fonts and formats that
suit the individuals needs.[4]
This has been championed by a variety of new companies.
Economics
Profits from print on demand publishing are on a per-sale basis, and
royalties vary depending on the route by which the item is sold. Highest
profits are usually generated from sales direct from the print-on-demand
service's website or by the author buying copies from the service at a
discount, as the publisher, and then selling them personally. Lower
royalties come from traditional "bricks and mortar" bookshops and
online retailers both of which buy at high discount, although some
POD companies allow the publisher or author to set their own discount
level. Unless the publisher or author has fixed their discount rate, the
higher the volume sold the lower the royalty becomes, as the retailer is
able to buy at greater discount.
Because the per-unit cost is typically greater with POD than with a
print run of thousands of copies, it is common for POD books to be more
expensive than similar books that come from conventional print runs,
especially if that book is produced exclusively with POD instead of
using POD as a supplemental technology between print runs.
Book stores order books through a wholesaler or distributor, usually
at high discount of anything up to 70 percent. Wholesalers obtain their
books in two ways; either as a special order where the book is ordered
direct from the publisher when a book store requests a copy, or as a
stocked title which they keep in their own warehouse as part of their
inventory. Stocked titles are usually also available via sale or return,
meaning that the book store can return unsold stock for full credit at
anything up to one year after the initial sale.
POD books are rarely if ever available on such terms because for the
publishing provider it is considered too much of a risk. However,
wholesalers keep a careful eye on what titles they are selling, and if
authors work hard to promote their work and achieve a reasonable number
of orders from book stores or online retailers (who use the same
wholesalers as the bricks and mortar stores), then there is a reasonable
chance of their work becoming available on such terms.
Although returnability lessens the risk for book stores and helps POD
authors get through the door, such authors should also realize that
there is only a certain proportion of stock that can be returned.
This difficulty with lack of returns can make bookstores less
enthusiastic about POD books. This though is set to change in the
future, as the industry is currently debating a move away from sale or
return altogether, which will do much to even things out.[citation
needed]
Another issue with print-on-demand titles is the fact that they are
often debut works.[citation
needed] Many book stores are reluctant to take a
risk on an author's first, untested work without the endorsement of a
commercial publisher.
See also
References
-
Jump up ^
Kleper,
Michael L. (2000). "The Handbook of Digital Publishing".
Rochester Institute of Technology Prentice Hall II.
ISBN 0-13-029371-7.
part of the Encyclopedia of Printing Technologies in 2 Volumes
-
Jump up ^
Scott
Jaschik (31 July 2007).
"New Model for University Presses" (electronic).
insidehighered.com. Retrieved
14 August 2007.
-
Jump up ^
Snow,
Danny (Jan-February 2001). "Print-on-Demand: The Best Bridge
Between New Technologies and Established Markets". BookTech: The
Magazine for Publishers.
-
Jump up ^
Garner,
Dwight (20 May 2008).
"Making Reading Easier". The New York Times.
Retrieved 22 May 2010.
Bibliography
- 2007.5 Writer's Market, Robert Lee Brewer & Joanna
Masterson. (2006)
ISBN 1-58297-427-6
- The Fine Print of Self-publishing: The Contracts & Services
of 48 Major Self-publishing Companies, Mark Levine. (2006)
ISBN 1-933538-56-2
- Print on Demand Book Publishing, Morris Rosenthal (2004)
ISBN 0-9723801-3-2