Print On Demand

Print on demand is a relatively new printing technology which delivers, literally, print "on demand". It is changing the way books are published radically, although many publishers are not yet using it on any scale and many writers are not yet familiar with its possibilities.

What is Print on Demand?

The traditional "batch printing" approach has been used by many years, for publishers to print a few thousand books at a time. Print on demand enables the books to be printed one at a time, literally 'on demand'. The book, including the cover, is set up as a digital file. When an order for a book is received, the correct file is selected by computer, which in turn gives the instruction to the print on demand machine to produce it, the book is trimmed and bound as part of the process, and despatched to the bookshop or directly to the purchaser. There is therefore an initial set-up cost, which covers setting up the file in the system, and usually a small annual charge for keeping it there. The actual cost of producing each individual book is rather more than the traditional batch printing cost per unit, but large savings are made elsewhere. It has also enabled the overall cost of producing a book to be substantially reduced.

The Advantages of Print on Demand

• You do not have to gamble your savings in the hope that your book will be a bestseller
• You have no warehousing or storage costs for storage of books
• You do not have to sit by the phone or answer the mail to send out the books when the orders arrive
• You don't have to chase and collect the money from the supply chain for the copies that are sold
• Your books are always in print

A publishing house normally does most of the above, which is how it earns its share of the book price. As a self-publisher, you still have some of the pre-production costs but once the book is set up for POD you receive a much larger share, if not all, of the income from each copy sold.

Self-publishing

A further benefit is that because the upfront costs of POD are so much lower, it brings publishing within the range of a great many more people. So, if you are thinking about self-publishing, POD makes this possible at a far more realistic cost. This is the technology we are using to print the books in our self-publishing service and it is remarkable how it has transformed the possibilities, giving the opportunity for all aspiring writers to consider self-publishing as a realistic alternative to finding a publisher.