Print on Demand (POD) - Saving the Publishing Industry From Itself

The book publishing industry is in trouble, plain and simple. It is an antiquated business that is does things basically the same way it did a century ago. It's a dying industry that has held fast to its old ways. In the business environment of the twenty-first century, you have to be fast, and you have to be efficient. Publishing is neither.

However, there is hope for this beleaguered industry, and its' name is "Print on Demand," also known as "POD."

Print on demand is a process in which books are printed on an individual basis as orders come in, rather than printing in bulk all at once. In other words, if one person orders a single copy of a book, a POD company would print and bind a single copy of the book for shipment to that one person.

There are many benefits to using a print on demand company for publishing, including:

1. Compared to the cost of configuring and printing a large number of books at once, the cost to set up a book for individual printing through a POD company is very small.

2. The ongoing economics work much more in your favor. Smaller quantity book orders, even down to a quantity of one, equal one printing. You don't have to worry about having hundreds or thousands of books lying around collecting dust in a warehouse. Books lying around cost money.

3. Print on demand offers great flexibility to publishers. POD is a unique business model that allows publishers to explore new revenue streams, reduce costs, increase market exposure and never miss a sale.

Print on demand is still young, and there are still technological innovations to come that will make it even more attractive. Print on demand is such that the quality of the books is very much equal to books manufactured using traditional offset methods. And with print on demand, publishers are not even bound by the format of the product. Books can be printed in large print, in foreign languages, or just about any configuration you can imagine. They can even be made into digital format, which gives publishers yet another way to offer their books to the public. Giving more options to consumers and more flexibility to publishers is a winning situation for everyone involved.

An up and coming variation of print on demand may involve machines installed in bookstores that allow them to print basically any book the customer wants. This will remove the limitation on the number of books that a bookstore can offer because of space limitations. While this technology is still in development for mass production, it is going to cause sweeping changes to the business of selling books in just a few years.

In the hyper competitive 21st century business environment, doing more with less is more important than ever. Print on demand lets you do just that. It is an immensely efficient way of doing business that levels the playing field for all sizes of publishers, giving all the chance to compete in the publishing arena.