POD = PRINT ON DEMAND
This is a form of printing where a specific company utilizes digital printing machinery to actually print books one at a time, when the demand necessitates action. Will it give you a rash? Will it kill you? Will it even hurt you? No to all of those questions.
PRINT ON DEMAND is simply a term used for a type of printing and not a type of publishing. There are many extremely reputable publishing houses that utilize PRINT ON DEMAND printing for a number of reasons.
POD technology allows publishers who prefer to put there $$ into marketing as opposed to printing books that may or may not sell. It allows printers to save money on purchasing materials that might ultimately be wasted when a print run doesn’t sell as well as a publisher hopes. It allows the paper producers to destroy fewer trees to produce materials that are again wasted.
There seems to be some misunderstanding in the book industry that POD books are substandard. Booksellers and librarians have been mislead to believe that books printed one at a time are not as good as “real books.” Okay, here is a news flash; some books that are printed on demand are actually better quality than books printed by offset printing companies.
Let’s consider why I say that. Say you are a bookseller and you order one book from Publisher A who uses print on demand technology. You can be assured that the POD book you will receive will have been thoroughly reviewed by the quality control staff member and is of the highest possible quality.
Now, say you buy one books from Publisher B who uses an offset printer (or as some in the industry insist on calling them, a traditional printer.) These books were printed in a set of, say, 25,000. How many of those books do you think were specifically checked for quality control? Probably 10%. You increase your chances considerably of getting a book that might not be properly bound or glued, or perhaps a section of the book got crimped in the binding process. That is a book you cannot sell and must go through the hassle of returning for credit. What a pain.
I hope that this brief explanation will make you stop and think about the options available to you as a bookseller or librarian next time an author or publisher comes to you.
As readers, I hope you will ignore all the hoopla about POD books and allow yourself the pleasure of reading an author who just might become a favorite author. It truly is of no concern to you as a reader how the book is printed, as long as the author has written an incredibly entertaining book.
Are you looking for a new favorite author? I would highly recommend you give Echelon Press authors a try. I am not at all embarrassed to say that Echelon has published some of the best writers currently available in the market. You can get more information on our authors by visiting www.echelonpress.com/directory.htm
Print on Demand companies
Lightning Source (owned by Ingram Book Company-largest Book distributor in US)
BookSurge (Owned by Amazon.com-need I say more?)
Lulu
Happy Reading!
©Karen L. Syed
I've found some awesome books through POD....thanks for defending it! Will be checking your list out too!
I used to work for a well-known printing retailer, in their closed door facility. We did mostly POD work for corporations and some very small publishers. In any case, I can attest to the fact that small run POD gets way more QC than large run jobs, and we did everything from one or two books, to a few thousdand for one order. Though, my manager and I were consistently at odds, because I thought every book should be of the highest quality possible regardless of the size of the order.
Thanks for clarifying that. POD publishing will soon be mainstream as midsize and large publishers rethink their business models to stay in business. At that point, there will be less pressure on everyone to sell out a print run.
Karen,
I have used POD printing for most of the books I published. And I can testify that I had many more problems with offset-printed books. One batch of offset books actually had so many errors and flaws that I couldn't sell almost 15% of them. All I could do was get a refund for those.