Print-on-demand

This page deals with print-on-demand, a technology that's touted as the cure for many publishing ills.

     background 

Publishing, even more than economics, is an inexact science. Publishers have traditionally complained about capital locked up in warehoused stock or books sent to retailers but then returned. And consumers have lamented that books go out of print too quickly - some overseas academic titles for example are out of print before the printed reviews.

In the late 1990s the academic side of Cambridge University Press (CUP) generated revenue of around £40m a year through the sale of roughly 13,500 titles. Over 8,000 of those titles sold under 100 copies in the year of release, with 5,000 selling under 50 copies and 2,000 selling under 10. As we've noted earlier in this guide, academic publishing is quite different to much technical publishing, which is in turn distinct from mass-market publishing. Some of the 'slow sellers' in CUP backlist will trickle out from the warehouses - if they're not remaindered - for years, a few copies each year.

CUP estimates that slow sellers are worth £3-5m in sales each year. It has been adding around 1,500 new titles and discontinuing between 1,000 and 1,500 titles each year. Potential sales for discontinued titles - judging by queries to the publisher - are estimated at around £1 million per year.

Academic publishers, some mainstream publishers, and some authors have thus been interested in what's been promoted as 'print-on-demand' or POD - printing of a single copy or an ultra-short-run (for example ten to twenty copies).

Much of the technology is not new: independent publishers and authors have been taking camera-ready copy and disks to local offset printers for at least two decades.

Proquest, the former Bell & Howell/University Microfilms, continues to dominate a market based on nicely-bound one-off photographic prints from microfilmed academic theses, with a Dissertation Express (DX) arm that produces unbound shrink-wrapped printout from PDF, distributed by express mail from regional centres. In the 1970s US publisher McGraw-Hill, printer RR Donnelley and manufacturer AM Graphics unsuccessfully promoted a device known as the Electrobook Press for the US college market.

POD won't solve the distribution problems of many aspiring authors (yes, you can print and bind your own masterpiece but - as even Virginia Woolf found - it's hard to get the resulting book onto the shelves of booksellers across the country).

However major publishers (and some distribution agents) are cautiously trialling internet-based POD. That's also being promoted by some hardware vendors. It involves downloading of an electronic text from a publisher's server for generation of a single copy - or a very small print run -  in a bookshop or a kiosk using a device that produces a trade paperback.

Don't expect low-acid paper or an impeccable hardcover binding replete with superb colour illustrations. However, if you believe vendor claims books need never go out of print and delays while your copy is shipped from overseas might be a thing of the past.

POD hardware and software isn't cheap. Most products and services have a proprietary basis: there are few international standards. The technology hasn't been embraced by consumers (perhaps because it's received little exposure). Publishers are attracted by the notion of less capital sunk in stock, warehouses and salespeople but understandably are being cautious. However it's likely to have a greater impact on book publishing during the next five years than e-books.

     initiatives 

The major US academic initiative is the Consortium for University Printing & Information Distribution (CUPID), a coalition brought together by the Xerox University Advisory Panel and now coordinated by the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). Xerox, Kodak, Oce, Toshiba and IBM have promoted proprietary hardware and software.

In the UK the Virtual Warehouse project brought together Palgrave, the academic arm of Holtzbrinck's Macmillan group, and the Anthony Rowe printing group in a POD trial using Xerox products. Holtzbrinck more recently announced and alliance with Lightning.

Apart from IBM and Xerox, the two leading specialists trialling the technology in US bookstores and libraries are Lightning and Sprout.

Lightning Print is a subsidiary of US national book wholesaler Ingram, maintaining its independence after foiling a takeover bid by Barnes & Noble. Lightning has around 4,500 titles on its server, drawn from academic, general and religious publishers.

Sprout promotional literature flags that they are turning book publishing and retailing upside down, replacing "the old way - print, distribute, sell" with "the Sprout way - sell, distribute, print!".  Borders, a US national retail chain, has recently acquired a major interest. Sprout is currently repositioning itself as a broad digital service-provider for booksellers and publishers.  Its major alliance is Viacom's publishing arm, particularly St Martins Press and Simon & Schuster.

Barnes & Noble has announced use of IBM technology in print-on-demand facilities in its regional distribution centres. So far the earth hasn't moved. In July 2001 we noted hype by MTI and others about about "Twelve-Minute Book Delivery". "Now you can order your books via the Internet and printed out while you wait (12 minutes) from an automatic vending machine".

     studies

Eric Peurell's 1998 EU report on Electronic publishing and Print on Demand: a review of current projects in Sweden and the more detailed 1999 paper by Alison Rivers on Print-on-demand: An overview of current experiences in Europe. Jill Walker's 1999 thesis (PDF) on Diffusion of Innovations Theory Applied: The Adoption of Digital On-Demand Technology by Book Publishers & Printers is decidedly upbeat but of value for its coverage of the US industry.

The Proceedings of the First International Conference for Professionals on Print-on-demand: A Technological Revolution at the service of Cultural Diversity, held in Strasbourg during January 2000 are uneven but of considerable interest.

Michael Spring's Electronic Printing & Publishing: The Document Processing Revolution (New York: Dekker 91) deals with the mechanics but unfortunately is quite dated. We'll be providing more pointers shortly.

Scott Bennett's 1998 JEP paper on Just-in-Time Scholarly Monographs offers an economic perspective. We've highlighted other issues with scholarly publishing earlier in this guide.

The US Print On Demand Initiative (PODI), a printing industry trade group, has published a 171 page Best Practices in Personalized Print report (PDF). The site also includes the 2000 Seybold Trends That Will Change the Business of Print (PDF). PODI's oriented towards the traditional offset printing and copy-shop markets rather than publishers.

For an example of enthusiasm about POD as the basis of new publishing golden age see Jason Epstein's 5 July 2001 article in the New York Review of Books. Characterising POD as an "epochal event, comparable to the impact of movable type on European civilization half a millennium ago, but with worldwide implications" he chortles that

it will permit authors to "sell their books to readers throughout the world directly from [web sites], bypassing publishers who may have rejected their work, while established writers may chose to forgo the security of a publisher's royalty guarantee in exchange for keeping the entire revenue from the sale of their books.

... From the consumer's point of view the experience of ordering a digital book selected from an on-screen catalog and printed at a nearby site will differ from buying a factory-made copy of the same book from an Internet retailer only in being nearly instantaneous, less likely to result in frustration if the physical book is out of print, and at a price that includes only a fraction of the retailer's markup.

     other media 

Recurrently there's noise about POD-style production of compact disks or even videos.

The same principles apply: information would be downloaded from the publisher's server to burn a CD while the customer kicked his/her heels elsewhere in the mall. EMI and Sony announced in July 1999 that they are embracing similar technology for producing compact disks on-demand. However, implementation of this celestial jukebox is proceeding slowly.

     publishing on demand 

The dark side of POD is what might be termed 'publishing on demand' - new millennium versions of the traditional vanity press. They'll edit, lay-out, print and even distribute your novel or nonfiction ... for a fee. Since most authors aren't willing to stump up the cash for a major print run and the publishers won't invest in works that are unlikely to sell, they're increasingly using POD technology.

Typically the author hands over the money (anywhere from US$1,000 to US$12,000) and receives ten copies of a text that was electronically submitted to the publisher. Consumers who want to read the book visit the publisher's web site; POD is used to generate the required number of copies. With a few exceptions (Amazon.com for example has a relationship with iUniverse) the books are only available from the author and the publisher's site: forget about copies in major offline bookstores or libraries.

Industry majors such as iUniverse, Fatbrain, XLibris and 1stBooks have been criticised for inappropriate charging (several US and EU writers associations have claimed that a traditional printer will print/bind more cheaply) and for blurring problems with distribution and identification. Some of the publishers, for example, don't bother to use ISBNs.

For many authors it would arguably be more effective to visit the local printer or to publish electronically, for example through sites dedicated to their writing. Overall the majors are shifting away from authors with unreadable (but alas not unprintable) novels and towards more lucrative printing of corporate technical documentation.



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