The System Known as Print on Demand (POD)

By Yvonne DiVita - Mar 20 , 2008

I continue to come across misinformation on the net about Print On Demand (POD) publishing. One area of confusion is in the terms: POD publishing and POD printing. Not everyone makes the distinction, but there is one.

POD Printing involves exactly what it says: creating a printed version of something, be it a brochure, a magazine, or a book. Using POD to do create your product via a POD printer involves very little on the author’s side. Designers or writers can easily find printers who will provide this service, locally. The difference is in the quantities and the turnaround time. Traditionally, printing requires a large print run, and can take days or weeks to process. With POD, you can actually do JIT (Just In Time) printing. A brochure or post card, or even a book, can be printed, one up (very small quantity runs), in one day.

POD publishing, on the other hand, involves more of the tasks associated with creating a professional product, and then using a POD printer to one-up it. For books, publishing tasks include editing, page layout, cover design, proofreading, image placement, and marketing. Most POD publishers charge market rates for these services, and include at least some marketing with their book packages. Generally, there are add-on marketing options. Some POD printers call themselves POD publishers. It’s a fine line that is slowly being erased by time. As each year goes by, POD becomes more popular for authors, and author services become more attractive to busy professionals.

The machines that printers or publishers use to create the one-ups or small quantity runs, especially books, are fairly large and cumbersome, as well as expensive. Xerox offers something it calls “Freeflow™” with more details here:

Here’s how they describe the Freeflow process on their website:

Books & Manuals – Set yourself apart in a crowded marketplace
Digital printing combined with a streamlined workflow is the ideal combination for short-run book publishing. The Books & Manuals solution will enable you to create digital books in short runs with an end-to-end, automated book publishing process, from order entry to finishing.

Of course, Kodak is in the game, also. I’m more familiar with the Nexpress™ as I know several printers locally who use it. The following press release from January, 2008, describes the latest update on Kodak’s digital printing opportunities for those who are attracted to the quick turnaround of POD. It’s an exciting press release as it describes a machine that is able to provide color prints at a more reasonable cost. To date, color on the inside of a POD book was economically prohibitive. Here’s what the press release says:

The NEXPRESS M700 Press features the KODAK NEXSTATION Front End, a powerful, scaleable application built on an open architecture that seamlessly accepts files from commonly used graphic design and imaging software. KODAK NEXSTATION Front End provides powerful processing of image intensive documents.

Some print-on-demand publishers have their own Nexpress or Freeflow, or some earlier version of these printers. Some outsource this part of the book-making process.
There are benefits to using print on demand beyond the quick turnaround and the ability to create small quantities of whatever it is you’re printing. This blog, at TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home discusses the “dysfunctional industry” we know as book publishing.

David Rothman notes some of the reasons the traditional publishing world falls down when it comes to serving its authors. He mentions pre-market buzz, which is one reason it takes so long for traditional houses to actually get a book into print. Traditional houses want to send out uncorrected proofs, get included in Publisher’s Weekly, and have new books in their own quarterly catalogs, which means they have to hold the books for printing, until they meet all those dates.

“But this marketing-related delay may happen at the expense of a book’s timeliness or the freshness and even accuracy of facts in it,” Rothman says. He recommends e-books as the pre-pub marketing tool. I like the way he thinks. Further in the post he writes, “Yet another issue is the reliance of most publishers on the goodwill of the major chains. A problem? Of course. My response would be, “Fix it with money.” Just make new business arrangements with Barnes & Noble and the rest; give them a cut from the E-sales, if need be, for example. Remind them, too, of the financial advantages, at the retailer end, of having a better, earlier handle on the reception that the paper edition will receive.”

He has a good point. E-books have come back into vogue (due to Kindle? I don’t know), and it behooves all publishers to look at the e-book model and how it not only supports marketing, but how it can attract readers. An e-book can be an additional option to the POD author’s publishing package, and it can create more buzz.

Meanwhile, back in the ancient days of 2002, David Dvorkin wrote an article discussing one of traditional publishing’s dirty secrets: warehousing of books. He writes about the enormous cost of warehousing books. He creates a scenario where “Giant Publishing House, Inc.” agrees to publish a book…and to print 100,000 copies. The printer then sends the books to a warehouse to wait for orders to arrive. Some books are sent to Ingram, a (perhaps the) major book distributor. Ingram holds them in another warehouse with books from other publishers until bookstores order them. Many of those 100,000 copies never leave the warehouse. Many get remaindered – sent back, if they don’t sell. Meanwhile, the publishing house is paying rent (and heat, and electricity, and salaries) on that warehouse.

I love this section of Dvorkin’s article: “Suddenly, GPH Inc. has a huge pile of paper with your name on it. That pile is taking up space and costing warehouse-rental money and potentially adding to the company’s tax bill. If your book was a hardcover, you’ll probably be offered the chance to buy a lot of copies at a cut rate… Some of the copies you don’t buy will go to remainder houses, companies that buy up such books and sell them by mail at a bargain price. Many of the unsold copies (most, if the numbers are on the order of those hypothesized above) will end up being pulped, sold for recycling into other paper products, such as toilet paper.”

He then goes on to tout the answer to this wasteful practice: Print On Demand publishing. He’s one who confuses the terms, but the content in this article, though already five years old, is still relevant.

It’s helpful to understand this process. And to recognize that POD is actually a process. It involves new technology in machines that take up a lot of space, but that save time and money. The machines are the means. You are the talent. The publisher is the support. All need to be aware of each other and work together to produce a quality product that readers will want to buy.

Here’s a link to one such machine, in a video describing how it all works, from On Demand Books. Enjoy. (It may take a minute or two to download, so be forewarned, and be patient.)

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