Demystifying Print On Demand (POD)

There are many ideal applications for Print on Demand when only a small number of books are needed. They include family genealogies, church histories, cookbooks and autobiographies with limited appeal to mostly family and friends. Other instances where this print approach makes sense is if an old book still sells a few hundred copies a year, you need a few dozen copies of a manuscript to send out ahead of time for advance blurbs, possible book club sales, or to interest an agent or trade publisher. Some speakers use POD when they need a small quantity of a customized workbook for a special client or a seminar.

While POD can be the perfect answer for the above situations, it often is not the best approach for a serious author/publisher. Short runs can be shortsighted. There is so much bewilderment surrounding this publishing venue, it’s as if Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen combined to craft a baffling mystery. So to help you sort out the options, here are some clarifications:

While you can save money by printing fewer books with POD printers, each book will cost you more. When you figure out what the fees are to print the interior and the cover of your book (each is separate), you’ll probably be in the $5 - $7 per book range. That gets expensive in a hurry if you plan on sending out many complimentary review copieswhich has proven to be absolutely the best way to sell books. In traditional printing of say, 3000 books, you’ll only spend about $2 or $3 a book, depending on different factors.

Quality is sometimes a problem with POD publishers. Most don’t require any editing, so manuscripts replete with errors may be the norm. (Even if you have yours professionally edited, you risk “guilt by association.”) It’s the old vanity/subsidy story cloaked in new technology. The covers seldom can compete with those seen in bookstores. And because the interior pages are usually created on a Docutech, laser printer toner is used in place of actual rich inks.

One of the main reasons most authors self-publish is because they want to maintain control of their books. With most POD houses this is lost because they issue you one of their ISBNs and list themselves as the publisher of record in Books In Print. An ISBN is to a book what your social security number is to you. It’s your ID in the world. Seems like a simple, helpful thing, right? Wrong! It can have far-reaching ramifications.

The ISBN is how people find the publisher of a book. So if a book club, corporate bulk buyer, cataloger, or filmmaker, for instance, seeks to purchase your book, their inquiry will be directed to the POD publisher, not you. This proves disastrous because POD is not designed to offer the deep discount such transactions require. So these special salesthat are often your bread and butter in traditional self-publishingdisappear without your ever hearing a word.

Unfortunately, bookstores are skeptical about carrying POD books. Bookstores typically require a 40% discount off the publisher’s retail price, the ability to return unsold books, operate by purchase order, and expect the publisher to pay all shipping fees. This all runs counter to how PODs operate. They offer less than a 40% discount, won’t allow books to be returned, aren’t equipped to issue purchase orders, and expect the bookstore to pay shipping fees of something like $3.50 per book. So there goes your bookstore market.

POD publishers, most of whom seem ridiculously inexpensive, use your book as a profit center. The more books you sell, the more money they make. It’s often left to you to drive traffic to Web sites and create any demand.

The author usually must pay in the neighborhood of 75% of the retail price of the book to get copies for review or to resell. Thus, if you were to try to sell to bookstores, which need a 40% discount, you would lose money on every book sold. One major POD house mandates that paperbacks retail for $16 and hardcovers for $25. So what do you make? On a paperback, for instance, the author royalty is $1.60 on any sales to bookstores, libraries, and resellers . . . and $4.00 when a book is sold direct to a consumer.

Let’s compare that to a traditional self-publishing arrangement. The average overall discount for small presses is 38%. (This takes into consideration books purchased at full price with no discounts, all the way to wholesalers who require a 55% discount.) If you had a $14.95 paperback, minus the 38%, your profit would be $9.27 per book. If you published a $22.95 hardcover and factored in that same overall 38% discount, you would make $14.23 on every book sold.

Do you want to make real money selling books? Serious, smart authors/publishers choose traditional self-publishing. The mystery is solved.

© Copyright 2005 Marilyn Ross

Tags: Writing, publishing, self-publishing, self publishing, book marketing, author

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