Print on demand
Encyclopedia
Print on demand sometimes called, in error, publish on demand, 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. "Print on Demand" developed only after digital printing
began, because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress and offset printing
.
Many traditional small press
es 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. Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or for performing test marketing.
, 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):
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.
-curable inks and media for large format
inkjet printer
s 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.
, 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 (à la 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.
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.
, 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.
companies (instead of directly to self-publishing
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 Content Group, a leading U.S. book wholesaler, and more recently BookSurge(now Createspace.com), an Amazon.com
company. Replica Books is the POD arm of wholesaler Baker & Taylor
, strong in library and academic markets, as well as bookstores in the Northeastern United States
.. Hewlett-Packard's MagCloud
publishes magazines in both print and digital form both for small publishers and provides a way for traditional magazine publishers to make back issues available.
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.
, 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. This has been championed by a variety of new companies.
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 an author works hard to promote their work and achieves 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.
Another issue with print-on-demand titles is the fact that they are often debut works. Many book stores are reluctant to take a risk on an author's first, untested work without the endorsement of a commercial publisher.
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
technology and business process in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until an order has been received. "Print on Demand" developed only after digital printing
Digital printing
Digital printing refers to methods of printing from a digital based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large format and/or high volume laser or inkjet printers...
began, because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress and offset printing
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
.
Many traditional small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
es have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers. Many academic publishers
Academic publishing
Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...
, including university presses, use POD services to maintain a large backlist
Backlist
A backlist is a list of older books available from a publisher, as opposed to titles newly published .Building a strong backlist has traditionally been seen as the way to produce a profitable publishing house, as the most expensive aspects of the publishing process have already been paid for and...
; some even use POD for all of their publications. Larger publishers may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or for performing test marketing.
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 printingOffset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
, 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 UVUltraviolet
Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...
-curable inks and media for large format
Large format
Large format refers to any imaging format of 4×5 inches or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the 6×6 cm or 6×9 cm size of Hasselblad, Rollei, Kowa, Pentax etc cameras , and much larger than the 24×36 mm frame of 35 mm format.The main advantage...
inkjet printer
Inkjet printer
An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of...
s has allowed artists, photographers and owners of image collections to take advantage of print on demand. For example, the National Gallery, London
National Gallery, London
The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
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.
Service providers
The introduction of POD technologies and business-models has fuelled a range of new book-creation and publishing opportunities. The innovation in this space is currently clustered around three categories of offeringsSelf-publishing authors
POD fuels a new category of publishing (or printing) company that offers services directly to authors who wish to self-publishSelf-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
, 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
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
. 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
Disintermediation
In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate , companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet...
classic publishers (à la 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.
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 PublishingTrafford Publishing
Trafford Publishing is a publisher using print on demand technology, formerly based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and now based in Bloomington, Indiana, USA.-History:...
, there is an effort now to make POD more mass-market. A class of horizontal technology platforms like Lulu, Blurb, Peecho and QooP
QOOP
QOOP is a web services company that was founded in Mill Valley, California in 2005. They run the website QOOP.com, which is presented as a 'social commerce network' for authors, artists, media archives and publishers.- QOOP.com :...
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 publishingPublishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
companies (instead of directly to self-publishing
Self-publishing
Self-publishing is the publication of any book or other media by the author of the work, without the involvement of an established third-party publisher. The author is responsible and in control of entire process including design , formats, price, distribution, marketing & PR...
authors) are also growing in popularity within the industry. The leading print-on-demand service providers for publishing companies are Lightning Source
Lightning Source
Lightning Source is a subsidiary of leading U.S. publishing services company Saab Content Group. The company is the leading printer and distributor of print-on-demand books. Originally incorporated in 1997 as Lightning Print Inc., the company is headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee. Its UK...
, a division of Ingram Content Group, a leading U.S. book wholesaler, and more recently BookSurge(now Createspace.com), an Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
company. Replica Books is the POD arm of wholesaler Baker & Taylor
Baker & Taylor
Baker & Taylor is the world's largest distributor of books and entertainment, in business for over 180 years. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and privately owned, in 2006 it had $2.2 billion in sales, employed 3,750 and was # 181 on Forbes list of privately owned companies...
, strong in library and academic markets, as well as bookstores in the Northeastern United States
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
.. Hewlett-Packard's MagCloud
MagCloud
MagCloud is a vanity press service of Hewlett-Packard which offers on demand sale of digital editions and single issue printing of magazines on demand for customers. Magazines are printed in full color via HP's indigo printers on high quality standard sized 8.5 x 11 inch paper at a cost of US...
publishes magazines in both print and digital form both for small publishers and provides a way for traditional magazine publishers to make back issues available.
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 back catalogs 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 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 publishingAccessible publishing
Accessible publishing is an approach to publishing and reading whereby books and other texts aren't only available in one standard format. Other formats that have been developed to aid different people to read include varieties of larger fonts, specialised fonts for certain kinds of reading...
, 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. 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 an author works hard to promote their work and achieves 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.
Another issue with print-on-demand titles is the fact that they are often debut works. 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
- Accessible publishingAccessible publishingAccessible publishing is an approach to publishing and reading whereby books and other texts aren't only available in one standard format. Other formats that have been developed to aid different people to read include varieties of larger fonts, specialised fonts for certain kinds of reading...
- Author millAuthor millAn 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...
- BookSurge
- Books LLCBooks LLCBooks LLC is an American publisher and a book sales club based in Memphis, Tennessee.-Print on demand and electronic products:Books LLC publishes print on demand paperback and downloadable compilations of English texts and documents from open knowledge sources such as Wikipedia. Books LLC's copy...
- Dynamic publishing
- Espresso Book MachineEspresso Book MachineThe Espresso Book Machine is a print on demand machine that prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes.The EBM is small enough to fit in a retail book store or small library room, and as such it is targeted at retail and library markets. The EBM can potentially allow...
- Muller MartiniMuller MartiniMuller Martini, based in Switzerland, manufactures a wide variety of web offset printing presses, bookbinding equipment, newspaper inserting systems, mail room delivery systems and other printing related equipment. Manufacturing facilities are located in Switzerland, Germany and the United States...
- Offset printingOffset printingOffset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
- Outskirts pressOutskirts pressOutskirts Press is a Denver, Colorado-based book publisher which caters to self-publishing authors.The company is based in Parker, Colorado, and offers print on demand self-publishing services, wholesale digital distribution to Ingram Content Group and Baker & Taylor, and online-order...
- Self publishing
- Vanity pressVanity pressA vanity press or vanity publisher is a term describing a publishing house that publishes books at the author's expense. Publisher Johnathon Clifford claims to have coined the term in 1959. However, the term appears in mainstream U.S...
- Variable data printingVariable Data PrintingVariable-data printing 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...
- Web-to-print
- PediaPressPediaPressPediaPress GmbH is a software development and print on demand company located in Mainz, Germany. The company is a 100-percent subsidiary of Brainbot Technologies AG....