'Print on demand (POD)', sometimes mistakenly referred to as 'publish on demand', is a
printing technology employed by publishers in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until after an order for them has been received. "Print on Demand" developed only after the development of
digital printing,
[1] because of the practical and economic difficulties of printing single copies using traditional printing technology such as
linocut,
Gutenberg letter press or
offset printing.
''Print on Demand'' is also a
trademark of
Cygnus Business Media,
[2] and a business model. Due to the minimal financial investment required, POD has become associated with
self-publishing and
vanity presses.
Many traditional
small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers, and many
university presses and other academic publishers use POD services to maintain a large backlist while other academic presses use POD exclusively.
[3] Larger presses may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or doing test marketing.
[4]
Book publishing through POD
Print on demand with digital technology is used as a way of printing items for a fixed cost per copy, irrespective of the size of the order. While the unit price of each physical copy printed is higher than with
offset printing, when setup costs are taken into account digital print on demand provides lower per unit costs for very small print runs than offset printing methods.
While the unit cost of a book or print produced using POD is usually higher than one produced as part of a longer print run, POD does bring some key business benefits: 1) large inventories of a book or print do not need to be kept in stock, 2) the technical set-up is usually quicker and less expensive than for offset printing and 3) 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 through POD
Digital technology is ideally suited to publish small print runs of
posters (often as a single copy) as and 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. The
National Gallery, London installed a print on demand system using
HP printers and technology in their shop in July 2003. The system increased the number of images available as prints from 60 to 2,500 (almost all of the gallery's permanent collection).
POD service providers
The invention of POD led directly to a new category of publisher that offers services directly to authors who wish to self-publish, usually for a fee. These services generally include printing and distributing 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 when compared with self-publishing that uses
print runs. Print-on-demand services offered by these providers often include other services such as formatting, proof reading and editing, etc. They do not though offer help with marketing, which is very much where the author comes in. It is a general belief within the publishing industry that many print on demand books are badly written and edited. Although this is the case with some, in the main the differences between these and traditionally published books are very hard to distinguish. The standards are improving all the time, especially since the introduction of colour printing technology earlier this year, 2007. One has to remember that the publishing industry is driven much more by sales and commercial viability than quality of the actual writing, and this is where POD comes into its own. The downside is of course this prejudice that such authors have to face, combined with high print costs which make it very difficult to offer the high discounts or sale or return that the industry is used to. The POD author then has to work ten times harder in order to market their work.
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.
Traditional publisher use
Print-on-demand services that offer printing and distributing services to publishing companies instead of directly to authors are also growing in popularity within the industry. The leading print-on-demand service providers for publishing companies are
Lightning Source, a division of
Ingram Book Group, a leading U.S. book wholesaler, and more recently
BookSurge, an
Amazon.com company.
Replica Books is the POD arm of the other leading wholesaler, Baker & Taylor, strong in library and academic markets, as well as bookstores in the
Northeastern United States.
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, and to maintain 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 very large back-catalogues of older works, 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 due 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 minimised 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.
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, with on-line bookstores falling somewhere in between. The higher the volume sold the lower the royalty inevitably 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. Because the POD business model typically relies on savings in warehousing expenses and in unsold books, returning POD-produced books can be problematic. There may not be a place for the copies to return to, and the publisher's budget might not allow for the expense of printing a book but not selling it. This means that publishers who rely heavily on POD are less likely to have a conventional "sale or return" policy, and may well not allow returns at all.
This difficulty with "returns" can make bookstores less enthusiastic about POD books, leading to a lower number of total sales. 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 level the playing field.
See also
★
Author mill
★
Dynamic page publishing
★
Muller Martini
★
Vanity press
★
Variable data printing
Footnotes
1. Kleper, Michael L. ”The Handbook of Digital Publishing”. Vol. II. By, Rochester Institute of Technology. Published by Prentice Hall, 2000, ISBN 0-13-029371-7 Encyclopedia of Printing Technologies in 2 Volumes [6]
2. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
3. New Model for University Presses Scott Jaschik
4.
Print-on-Demand: The Best Bridge Between New Technologies and Established Markets Danny Snow
Bibliography
★ ''2007 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 1-9335385-6-2
★ ''Print on Demand Book Publishing'', Morris Rosenthal (2004) ISBN 0-9723801-3-2
External links
★
Warnings and Cautions for Writers - warnings about the type of subsidy publishing that uses POD
★
Print on Demand Publishing - a print-on-demand case study with costs and profits
★
An Incomplete Guide to POD - a guide to POD service providers and subsidy publishers
★
Self-Publishing, POD Technology and Author Mills - an explanation of the relationship between POD and these two business models
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