Print on demand

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Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other documents, packaging, or materials) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints in single or small quantities. While other industries established the build-to-order business model, POD could only develop after the beginning of digital printing ^[1] because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technologies such as letterpress and offset printing.

Contents

• Predecessors
• Book publishing
• Other publishing
• Service providers
• Self-publishing authors
• POD enablement
• Publisher use
• Economics
• Author's Reversion Rights
• See also
• Bibliography
• References

Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contracted their printing to POD service providers. Many academic publishers, including university presses, use POD services to maintain large backlists (lists of older publications); some use POD for all of their publications. ^[2] Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older, out-of-print titles or for test marketing. ^[3]

Predecessors

Before the introduction of digital printing technology, production of small numbers of publications had many limitations. Large print jobs were not a problem, but small numbers of printed pages were typically during the early 20th century produced using stencils and reproducing on a mimeograph or similar machine. ^[4] These produced printed pages of inferior quality to a book, cheaply and reasonably fast. By about 1950, electrostatic copiers were available to make paper master plates for offset duplicating machines. From about 1960, copying onto plain paper became possible for photocopy machines to make multiple good-quality copies of a monochrome original. ^[4]

In 1966, Frederik Pohl discussed in Galaxy Science Fiction "a proposal for high-speed facsimile machines which would produce a book to your order, anywhere in the world". As the magazine's editor, he said that "it, or something like it, is surely the shape of the publishing business some time in the future". ^[5] As technology advanced, it became possible to store text in digital form – paper tape, punched cards readable by digital computer, magnetic mass storage, etc. – and to print on a teletypewriter, line printer or other computer printer, but the software and hardware to produce original good-quality printed colour text and graphics and to print small jobs fast and cheaply was unavailable.

Book publishing

Print on demand with digital technology is a way to print items for a fixed cost per copy, regardless of the size of the order. While the unit price of each physical copy is greater than with offset printing, the average cost is lower for very small print jobs, because setup costs are much greater for offset printing.

POD has other business benefits besides lesser costs (for small jobs):

• 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.
• Many publishers use POD for other printing needs other than books such as galley proof, catalogs and review copies.

These advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books and prints and can result in 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 jobs of posters (often as a single copy) when they are needed. The introduction of ultraviolet-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, UK art retailer King and McGaw fulfills many of its art print orders by printing on-demand rather than pre-printing and storing them until they are sold, requiring less space and reducing overheads to the business. ^[6] This was brought about after a fire destroyed £3 million worth of stock and damage to their warehouse. ^[7]

Service providers

The introduction of POD technologies and business models has created a range of new book creation and publishing opportunities. There are three main categories of offerings.

Economics

Profits from print-on-demand publishing are on a per-sale basis, and royalties vary depending on the method by which the item is sold. Greatest profits are usually generated from sales direct from a 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. Lesser royalties come from traditional 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.

Because the per-unit cost is typically greater with POD than with a print job of thousands of copies, it is common for POD books to be more expensive than similar books made by conventional print jobs.

Book stores order books through a wholesaler or distributor, usually at a discount of as much as 70%. Wholesalers obtain their books in two ways: either as a special order such that the book is ordered direct from a publisher when a book store requests a copy, or as stocked, which they keep in their own warehouse as part of their inventory. Stocked books are usually also available through "sale or return", meaning that the book store can return unsold stock for full credit as much as 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 monitor what works are selling, and if authors promote their work successfully and achieve a reasonable number of orders from book stores or online retailers (who use the same wholesalers as the stores), then there is a reasonable chance of their work becoming available on such terms.

Author's Reversion Rights

In 1999, the Times Literary Supplement carried an article entitled "A Very Short Run", in which author Andrew Malcolm argued that under the rights-reversion clauses of older, pre-PoD contracts, copyrights would legally revert to their authors if their books were printed on demand rather than re-lithographed, and he envisaged a test case being successfully fought on this aspect. ^[10] This claim was contradicted by an article entitled "Eternal Life?" in the Spring 2000 issue of The Author Magazine (the journal of the UK Society of Authors) by Cambridge University Press's Business Development Director Michael Holdsworth, who argued that printing on demand keeps books "permanently in print", thereby invalidating authors' reversion rights. ^[11]

See also

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Print on demand .

• 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

Related Research Articles

A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Modern books are typically in codex format, composed of many pages that are bound together and protected by a cover; they were preceded by several earlier formats, including the scroll and the tablet. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination.

Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as e-books, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.

Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals, and magazines to be posted on a screen.

A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbooks and other books used in schools. Today, many textbooks are published in both print and digital formats.

A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where the author pays to have the book published. It is not to be confused with hybrid publishing, where the publisher and author collaborate and share costs and risks, or with assisted self-publishing, where the author pays publishing services to assist with self-publishing their own book, and retains all rights.

A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.

A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably.

An out-of-print (OOP) or out-of-commerce item or work is something that is no longer being published. The term applies to all types of printed matter, visual media, sound recordings, and video recordings. An out-of-print book is a book that is no longer being published. The term can apply to specific editions of more popular works, which may then go in and out of print repeatedly, or to the sole printed edition of a work, which is not picked up again by any future publishers for reprint.

An author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers. The term was coined by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, as a parallel formation from diploma mill, an unaccredited college or university that offers degrees without regard to academic achievement, and puppy mill, a breeding operation that produces large numbers of puppies for sale with little regard for breed purity, puppy placement, health, or socialization.

Variable data printing (VDP) is a form of digital printing, including on-demand printing, in which elements such as text, graphics and images may be changed from one printed piece to the next, without stopping or slowing down the printing process and using information from a database or external file. For example, a set of personalized letters, each with the same basic layout, can be printed with a different name and address on each letter. Variable data printing is mainly used for direct marketing, customer relationship management, advertising, invoicing and applying addressing on selfmailers, brochures or postcard campaigns.

Trafford Publishing is a book publishing company for self-publishing authors. Formerly based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Trafford Publishing is now based in Bloomington, Indiana, US.

Web-to-print, also known as Web2Print, remote publishing or print e-commerce is commercial printing using web sites. Companies and software solutions that deal in web-to-print use standard e-commerce and online services like hosting, website design, and cross-media marketing.

Víctor Manuel Celorio Celorio is a Mexican-American author, entrepreneur, inventor, and former union organizer. He is best known as the inventor of InstaBook, a digital printing technology. He lives and works in Gainesville, Florida.

Dorchester Publishing was a publisher of mass market paperback books. Although mostly known for romance, Dorchester also published horror, thriller and Western titles.

Lightning Source is a printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. The company is a business unit of Ingram Content Group. Originally incorporated in 1996 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee, United States. Its UK operations are based in Milton Keynes. They also have operations in Maurepas, France and Melbourne, Australia.

Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon.com's e-book publishing platform launched in November 2007, concurrently with the first Amazon Kindle device. Originally called Digital Text Platform, the platform allows authors and publishers to publish their books to the Amazon Kindle Store.

DiggyPOD is a privately owned company that prints books on demand for the publishing industry and for self-publishing authors. The company name DiggyPOD is a modified acronym of the phrase “Digital Printing On Demand.”

A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid publishers comes from both book sales and fees charged to the author for the execution of their publishing services.

References