Is Amazon Poised to Steal Print On Demand?

Many saw Print On Demand (POD) as the ultimate ‘just in time’ production solution to book publishing, which would wipe out all the inefficiencies of the ‘just in case’ approach that plagues the book supply chain. So why didn’t it happen, or did it happen for some and not for others? Is there a new dawn, or just a new set of people who have been sold a pup and not looked hard at the facts?

Today we read that Barnes and Noble are installing Espresso Book Machines in three of their store, including their New York flagship in Union Square. Books-a-Million also has installed two in its stores last year and Powells has one in Portland. But are all these genuine investment cases or mere subsidised trails? 

   

We are all aware of the huge success Ingram have made with Lightning Source both in the US and UK and the substantial side benefit this has given them with Ingram Digital and in acquiring digital content. Some would suggest that other more single focused operations such as Rowe’s in the UK have been less successful and in general, the main production presses have continued to plough their own furrows. Amazon acquired Booksurge which has now morphed into CreateSpace and has been aligned closely with their Kindle KDP and Audible self-publishing offers. In 2012 Kodak entered into the space with a strategic alliance with Espresso to site POD machine in non book outlets to also service their picture kiosk offer and although two machines were installed in Bartell Drug Stores near Seattle, this apparently has failed to impress Kodak.

In the UK Blackwells installed an Espresso POD machine in their Charring Cross store. There were many mistakes made, with the machine not only taking up valuable retail space, but often being unmanned, as staff wanted to sell books and didn’t want that ‘monitor’ position. The customer also had to often wait, either for someone to operate it, or just for a book to be spat out. Best of all, they had so much faith in its ability to drive sales, they tried to hide the machine around a corner. They didn’t know its audience and it was poorly marketed both within the store and to a wider audience.

The challenge is not the technology, it’s with its adaption and adoption, subsequent return on investment for all and perceived added consumer value. It’s also like eInk technology, in that it looks great and is capable of delivering, but if it takes too long, or the wrong strategy is adopted, it can be overtaken and merely becomes transient technology.

Many suggested that POD would solve many environmental issues but we would suggest that they first may wish to also look closer at the technology and paper stock used in the current machines.

The challenge is that POD means many things to many people.

To some it is a substitute for short print runs. One academic publisher very successfully could predict sales of its back list, so it set thresholds at which POD kicked in and replenished inventory according to forecasted demand and in doing so kept high priced books in stock. It even only had one location worldwide to service distributed hubs and they could afford to fly it around the world once sold. POD can work on predicable sale patterns and high ticket books.

Others waited until the backlist book inventory hit the bottom and operated on sell one make one basis, again ensuring the book remained in stock and obviated the ‘reprint under consideration’ lost orders and print gambles.

Some printed more POD stock than was healthy and used POD to simply reduce their print run exposure and inflated the price to pay for this higher ticket item. Interestingly, ask those POD operators if the print singles or bulk orders first? Also like any machine they return the best investment if they operate flat out and not intermittently between the hours of 9 till 5. 

However, the big challenge for many was the basic model. All tended to stick with the print and distribute model and this was personified by Ingram who printed and then distributed, either on a pick, pack and dispatch direct to order, or more frequently indirect to stock. The real opportunity was to flip from ‘print and distribute’ to ‘distribute and print’ and bring the manufacture closer to the consumer. But to do so one now has to ask what is ‘local’ in a world were delivery is shrinking to same day?

So why do we think that the Barnes and Noble ‘test’ is irrelevant? Firstly, unless the service is perceived as universal then it has questionable marketing advantage and real cost and service issues as there will be more ‘only available at limited stores’ and less ‘available here.’ We don’t envisage a return to the 17 and 18th printer within the shop and the machines are not going to shrink to a desktop today. We do however see it working within institutions and public libraries who often have different needs, service offers and return on investment critique.  

So who could be a winner apart from Ingram? Well this is yet another lesson being taught by Amazon, who, by reducing their delivery times to even same day, have potentially removed the ‘local’ issue. If the can buy online and have it turned around in the same timescale as a traditionally printed book, will the customer care if it’s POD or traditional? Amazon has also gone for the classic sell one make one model that aligns to self publishing and positioned it alongside KDP and their Audible self publishing offers. Tomorrow they are in a great position to now offer the same service to publishers and retailers who wish to reduce stock but increase availability. Maybe Booksurge was a very canny buy and under CreateSpace can become another part of an increasingly well thought through and formidable holistic offer.

Ingram Reduce The Cost of Colour POD

POD has not lived up to its expectation. This has been down to a number of factors, but mainly the high cost of the print and the printers. It worked fine on high ticket works such as academic monographs, whose price was high enough to absorb the rise in print cost and still make a healthy margin, but for standard fiction and reference the price was often prohibitive. The ebook market then started to become the attractive option for the self publishing market and why produce physical books that may only clutter up the garage when you can produce a virtual one that may actually generate sales. Not many talked about the environmentally unfriendly aspects of POD, but they remain today. Finally there was the realisation that POD didn’t change the distribution model to one of ‘distribute and print’, but all too often remained wedded to the old ‘print and distribute’ one. Forget colour that was just another prohibitive cost hike.

Ingram Content Group, which has dominated the international POD market, has now announced a new “standard colour” cost reduction, which makes colour POD potentially more cost viable. They are significantly reducing the cost price of a standard 6x9 trade paperback from between $12 - $13.50 to $4-$5 on a single copy run and to $3 a copy on a short run of 500. A reduction of some 60%!

Ingram are achieving the price drop by switching to new high-speed inkjet technology which will initially go live in the US and then internationally next year. They claim that any drop in print quality through the new technology is very marginal and not noticeable and that colour could open up a new option to many.

So will this change herald in a new dawn for the POD market, or just reduce the cost of colour POD and potentially brighten up some of those greyscale editions. Colour certainly will be attractive and a 60% price reduction can’t be ignored, but POD is still not delivering it potential. After all this will not impact the existing POD business and text based works. POD remains a printer in a distribution hub and not a printer in a community one. The scale and scope of economics is still centralised and Ingram are merely replacing the printer of yesterday. It most definitely will not lead to hundreds of POD community print hubs and it probably will not impact the high end quality print market.   

  

POD remains a half way print house in a declining print market. 

Tales From Typographic Oceans

Remember those great vinyl album covers of yesterday? We have a lot to thank the recently departed Alex Steinweiss for in inventing the cover art form and to others such as Roger Dean for giving us artwork to equal and that was reflective of Yes’s music. Steinweiss not only created the art form, but in doing so had a demonstrable impact on sales. Ask any Beatle’s fan which is simpler, to name the tracks on any albums or describe the cover. Vinyl shrunk to CD and the jacket artwork started to become less important and metadata took over. As the album model migrated to tracks, the jacket became somewhat irrelevant and the track could now be sampled in a click without even the taster of the jacket.

Think about your favourite novel and what will come to your mind is not so much the words, the characters, but the jacket. Yes, a picture tells a thousand words and book covers have always sold books and enticed readers to buy. The image is that single snapshot that is designed to reflect the content. For the older generation this clearly also works for vinyl albums.

When we still have the physical cover artwork and typography we have the imagery, but will that be the case forever? How do we market and promote ebooks in a way that embeds the image and its association into the reader’s mind?

When you read an ebook the jacket is often lost. You may see it on the selection shelf, but on a click you open the book at page one and the text. They often don’t make it easy to see the cover. After all it’s the text you bought and want. If you return to your elibrary, it is often just a list of titles you see and in one click you are taken to the text. The magic of the graphically designed cover is often lost and it’s not as if you are reminded every time you pick up the book. As for the greyscale readers the image can change all together.

All this is understandable and is part of the digital change process but what is the impact?

Another interesting cover point relates often to print on demand titles. Today the print on demand rendition often borrows the physical jacket, but where it is a reissue this may not possible and there may also be rights issues. We may find a cover with straight text, not typographically designed and sitting on a coloured background. This standardisation of the jacket may work for academic monographs and education texts, but surely not for fiction.

So as move into a digital library world how do we get that imagery association? Is it important, or is it like the album cover a fond memory of how it used to be? Do we need artists and designers and if so how should their skills be channelled?

It is interesting that if I remember the last two ebooks I read I can’t remember the jacket, nor do I have an image of the book. I do remember the story, the characters but it’s not as clean as the last two physical books I read or even the books I read last year.

Perhaps I am getting old and too fond of yesterday?

The Blurring of BookWorld Boundaries

How many agents and authors does it take to demonstrate that digital is different?

Jane Friedman’s Open Road clearly identified the opportunity and agents and authors are now latching onto the opportunity and Ian Fleming’s estate and Sonia Land’s recent Catherine Cookson's e-book deal show that the momentum is gaining ground.

Today we read in the Bookseller that one of the Uk’s most significant and respect agents, Ed Victor Literary Agency, has launched Bedford Square Books. Which will initially focus of putting back into the market reverted rights for authors whose books are out of print and forgotten by the trade. Bedford Square Books plans to release to some six titles this year and a further six at the beginging of next year. Interestingly they intend to also launch Bedford Square Stories, based on original or reverted short stories.

There are many great titles that are looked away in cupboards that could be brought back into the digital arena. Some may be simply flagged as ‘reprint under consideration’, others reverted and then there are the prized orphans. Everyone wants to see books being made available and digital can offer the opportunity to do this at a relatively low risk and cost. It looks like publishers who simply sit on rights that are out of print will be challenged to make them digital.

Of course we must be wary of those who simply revert to print on demand to circumvent reverting rights and to perpetually retain rights. Reversion clauses that were built for print and not for POD can’t just be assumed nor can volume rights be claimed and increasingly authors need to be vigilant to this.

The bookworld boundaries continue to become blurred as retailers go past buying into print run punts and packaging deals and become publishers and publishers push to go direct and be retailers. This blurring is good for all as the author has more opportunities and potentially greater control of the works, the publisher has think back, mid and front list and digital and the retailer sells ‘books’ not just front list.

The thorny issue remains that of the rights contract. We believe that the digital and print should be separate contracts and under separate terms, one based on inventory and sales the other on fixed short term and renewable terms. We also believe that the ‘non compete’ clause which is prevalent in rights contracts needs to be legally tested to see if it covers all potential media renditions or only specific format.

It is interesting to look back at the prosperous 18th century London booksellers such as Robert Dodsley, who were all large copyright owners. We quote from, The Life of Robert Dodsley, “… for the real money lay in ownership of copyrights, not in the retailing… booksellers were the entrepreneurs who purchased rights from authors, and, binding to others, merchandised and finished the product through advertisement and trade distribution.”

A Rights Business With No Rights Registry

Many see digital as opening up new opportunities one of which is to identify those old best sellers that have gone out of print and get then back on the shelf. Obviously it would be good to get them on the digital shelf as ebooks and with a relatively low investment they can be up and available competing with everyone else again. Once out there, there is little need to do anything except collect whatever sales revenues occur. The other option is to make them available once again in a physical POD (print on demand) rendition. Again once set up, POD is just a case of collecting the money from the sales, on a book that may never go out of print, needs no marketing spend and may never get its rights reverted.

In somewhat a roundabout way this is where Google came in and is what the, still unsettled, book settlement is about. The problem was never those new works under new contracts that allowed them to go digital, nor those that had slipped into public domain and no longer were tethered to anyone. It was always about orphans and many of this were not completely parentless, but just lying dormant and ‘out of print’. To all those wishing to adopt orphans, ‘out of print’ now offers relatively cheap digital pickings.

Many dispute the orphan numbers and debate numbers and not ethics. Some will assume rights and adopt a ‘publish and be dammed‘ approach always willing to admit an error when found out, but too lazy to do the diligence to establish the facts first.
We write this not as a piece of theory, but as a result of establishing books that were sucked into a trade publishing programme improperly. Some will basically trawl their best sellers that are out of print and readopt them without the appropriate diligence.

So again we ask how publishing is to manage rights in a digital world when it has no registry? How do authors and estates protect themselves from digital tethering and how can authors effectively monitor the situation?

This is a Rights Business

This weekend saw an interesting letter published in The Daily Telegraph ‘Books on Demand’. The letter focused on print on demand and claimed that, ‘Publishers appear to be selling material that is freely available online to extract money from unsuspecting book buyers.’

The complaint was against ‘publishers’ and was in danger of tarnishing all with the same brush. Ruth Allen was rightly annoyed to discover that a $15 Print on demand book in the US which she claims was a copy of four of her articles, which were largely her work and made freely available over Wikipedia under their Creative Commons licensing copyright agreement. She objects to her altruism being used by others for profit but as we were unable to find the material under her name on Wikipedia, it is almost impossible for us to validate her claims.

We fully support Creative Commons licensing and its fair use, but respect that its unfair usage may be difficult to control in this digital age where exploitation is merely a click, or a short ‘low risk’ print run away.

We recently discovered a more traditional book work that had been republished as a print on demand rendition by its publisher, even though the contract did not permit that, reversal conditions had been met and the request for a reversal had been ignored. We only discovered the infringement by accident and the situation has been now resolved. The question is, how much infringement is now creeping back under the print on demand long tail.
We wonder if we will all be spending more and more time monitoring and searching for infringements in the future, with more and more take down notices being issued retrospectively. The Scribd and Wattpad platforms have demonstrated how easy it is for some to infringe and also how difficult it is for all to proactively manage content. In addition to the online threat we also now have a growing print on demand environment which itself is creating ‘low risk’ opportunities to publish first at little risk and be dammed.

We now talk about term licensing of digital rights but who will know when the term has expired? We openly dispute to volume of orphan works out there with the numbers often varying according to the position taken on their adoption. It is becoming easier to scan and copy books and torrent sharing is here today. There has always been serious book piracy, it is not new but just getting easier.

Some would suggest that a rights business without a rights registry in a digital world is an open door for those who wish to exploit it and a nightmare for those who want to protect their property and rights. We are no experts on copyright but would suggest that there must be a better way than expecting the owner to spend their time ensuring that the rights have not been infringed

Send the Light – On Demand

The Christian publishing market is huge and global and STL Distribution North America (STLD) has been core to its supply with its consolidation and distribution service and operations around the world.

Now they have stepped up their service to integrate a full onsite print on demand service involving Dickinson Press and technology firm Snowfall Press. Rom a dedicated STLD facility at its distribution centre Dickinson Press will manage the process with Snowfall Press providing the integration of the system to enable the automated uploading of files through to printing, binding and shipping. The service is planned to go live early 2011 and provide STLD client resellers access to thousands of titles and shipment the same day.

STLD President Glenn Bailey said "The alliance enables us to provide same day turn-around of orders--even for out-of-print books--and will give authors and publishers access to a broader range of distribution channels than were previously available."
Print on demand is not new, nor is it new to the Christian market, but STLD’s global reach and operating units outside the US clearly now start to have the opportunity to participate and the potential to make this offer far wider reaching than just the US.

This would not only reduce global inventory and shipment costs dramatically but obviously increasing availability and service to all globally.

The Great Book Bank Robbery - What Do You Want To Be when You Grow Up?

A question we often ask children, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ We often ask the same of businesses who appear to be spreading their bets across several opportunities. We could now ask ourselves and Google exactly what the book settlement will look like if it is allowed to mature. What started out as a case action against copyright infringement is now clearly turning into something that if unchecked could morph into a category killer. Some will rub their hand s and say it will be for the good of all, others are desperately holding up warning cards and Google’s response is to ask if anyone could have done better!

Many predicted that Google aimed to be a bookseller – the finally declared their hand and the implications are still not really being thought through. Many saw the obvious link through to print on demand and to move into physical books and to further exploit the assets they acquire for chump change. Many saw the dangers to the library infrastructure and the potential danger of ‘loose pricing arrangements’, but many blindly appear to trust strangers bearing gifts. Many saw the need for a rights registry and welcomed the impetus to initiate the move, but we have already seen who really owns it and their ability to change even the construct of it while it is being deliberated in what some would say is an attempt to merely get their way. Many saw the emerging conflict with digital aggregators and service providers but dismiss this as mere commerce and forget the investment and legitimate route that these took. Will they go the full circle and become a publisher? We doubt it but a facilitator of self publishing may well appeal and who can stand in their way?

What prompted us to write once again about what we named last October as ‘The Great Book Bank Robbery’?

Google recognises that simply digitizing the world's books is merely the key to the door, exploiting them and ‘sweating the asset’ in every conceivable manner including turning them back into print pages is the real goal. Google will provide some 2m out-of-copyright book titles to the On Demand Books partnership. This may double the service’s inventory today but what about tomorrow? We talk about the Amazon, Google battle but what about the Ingram, Google one in areas such as print on demand and digital distribution? Depending on the outcome of the US Justice Department's investigation into the Google Books project, they could soon get access to a further stash of 'orphan' book titles. It is expected that they will raise a number of concerns with the settlement but charm and platitudes will no doubt follow from all parties to the deal. We may all dispute the number of orphan works but the issue has never been about whether this was one or 6 million the question was about the exclusivity, the clear breach of their current legal status and now even what can be done with them once the flood gates are released.

On Demand Books will obviously benefit and retailers with the machine will wonder about the franchise sitting on their floor alongside the coffee one and what is the real draw and who owns the customer. The Google Books titles will go on sale through the machine at a recommended retail price of USD8. From this, On Demand Books and Google will each take an estimated USD1 cut, with USD3 going on materials and the remaining USD3 profit going to the retailer that houses the machine. Google claims that it will donate its share of the profits to charity.

So as we take it all in and await the next announcement partnership we ask once again what Google's Book Settlement wants to be when it grows up? We are reminded of that thoughtful presentation on the subject by Larry Lessing ‘Lessing’s Thoughts on the Google Book Settlement’ . Perhaps we should all be mindful of tiger cubs, they may look like kittens, act like kittens but grow up to be something very different!

It's Down to Selection not Age

So there is little value in those lost orphans and out of print books that Google are fighting over. Many soldier in the belief that the front list publishing fixation will continue, with that 13 week window deciding success and failure. However, others believe that the value lies not just in the bestseller punts of tomorrow, but also the wealth of material already published.

Some continue to believe that books rarely get a second chance and that if they have failed once, they will fail again. Also if the were successful first time, then they have had their 15 minutes of fame. This fixation on the front list often flies against all reason and the consumers continued interest in back lists and classics. We only have to look at film, music and other media, to see that there will always be a second new audience. Consumers rarely skip straight to the copyright page to see when a book was published and the publication date is irrelevant to many.

So why so many have books fallen by the wayside? Over time lists have often been exchanged or bought, publishers cease to trade, authors become impossible to trace and rights records become hidden in cupboards and filing boxes under thick layers of dust. It is therefore difficult to establish the rights owner and get permission to reprint. The truth is often as easy to publish a new title, than revisit the old and the print and distribution economics were often against a punt on a second life.

However, today’s digital technology changes this, offering low risk print on demand and short print runs, internet marketing and ecommerce to a viral audience from a virtual warehouse. The ebook extends this opportunity and now every book has to compete not in 13 week window, but against every title ever published. The key to re publishing is the same as with new titles – picking the winners. However, unlike new titles who’s visibility depends on marketing and placement, older titles can have a sales history which may also help in their selection. They also may be relatively cheap to acquire.

We have recently seen the success of Cambridge’s print on demand programme, Faber and Faber’s new classics and Penguin’s continual programme of refreshing the back list and keeping it imprint. We now read that Barnes & Noble will republish out-of-print books in redesigned hardcovers. The first 33 titles in the series, include works by Loren Eiseley, Norman Cohn, Ted Hughes and Owen Barfield.

Barnes and Noble have long be publishers, reprinters and packagers. In the eighties they had talented scouts such as John Kelly and Jeanette Limodjian who fed their successful mail order business with their Dorset imprint of highbrow selections. Remember titles such as, 'The Verbal Art of Self Defence' and 'The Mabinogion?' Now under the stewardship of Sterling Publishing we believe it is a return to proven ways. Importantly they are booksellers with a history of knowing what sells and have multiple sales platforms form which to promote and sell these new editions.

We believe that Barnes and Noble’s move is very wise and also significant in that it starts to return us to those early 18th century days of the likes of Robert Dodsley, when booksellers were bookbinders, booksellers, rights owners and publishers

There's Money In Those Old Books

The University of Michigan has announced a collaboration with Booksurge, Amazon’s print on demand service. As a result Booksurge will offer reprints of some 400,000 rare, out-of-print and out-of-copyright books from its library in soft cover editions at prices from $10 to $45.

The books are in more than 200 languages from Acoli to Zulu and include a 1898 book on nursing by Florence Nightingale, "Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is not." Some of the books are one of kind, meaning they had been available only from the shelves of the University of Michigan.

The move is now possible because of the university's project to digitize its collection in partnership with Google and the as books in the Michigan-Amazon deal are in the public domain, the revenues generated will be split between Booksurge and the University.

The arrangement is a significant addition to BookSurge's inventory and it will be interesting to watch if others follow and whether the arrangements will be exclusive or open. The other question is how Google will respond as the move could be seen as cutting off what many thought was an obvious revenue stream .

Today the deal involves public domain works and as we wrote earlier this week with respect to the dispute between Wikipedia and The National Portrait Gallery in the UK making – he who owns the public domain rendition and digitalises it can now earn from it.

University of Michigan libraries Dean Paul Courant said the arrangement means "books unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time." Albeit at a new price.

On Demand Overtakes the Rest

We now have more US on demand and short run titles coming to market than those produced by traditional production methods. However, what does that mean and if the trend were to continue, what are the likely implications? Bowker report today that whilst traditional title production fell by 3% to 275,232, in 2008, the on demand titles rose 132%, to 285,394 and the number of titles rose 38%, to 560,626 titles. The rise in on demand follows the record increase of 462% in 2007 and since 2002, has risen 774% in comparison to a 126% increase in traditional titles.

Today on demand is not just about self publishing or keeping that back list alive and is gaining a wider publishing take up. Yesterday was very much print just in case and accepting that ‘extra special print run-on’ to reduce the unit cost. Today is more print in time, producing short print runs with the ability to quickly respond to demand if required. The long tail is getting longer, with more publishers looking at their back list, or to keep titles in print by flipping them to POD and so avoiding rights reversals. The investment is low and has long attracted self publishing authors wanting to see themselves in print. It has also worked well for high priced mongraphs whose sales are low and reasonably predictable. Some such as Cambridge University Press have proved themselves ver adept in using POD to increase revenues.

However, POD has not only helped built the Ingram Lightning Source but also help kick start the Ingram Digital Ventures. The flip from POD to ebook is but a small step and as PDF based Adobe eBooks are still the dominate format, the relationship between POD and eBook will surely grow ever stronger in many ways.

We now see new POD entrants and the production of service neutral files linked to automated formatting and distribution makes much sense moving forward.

Finally will the self publishing model now move online or ebook and away from POD, or will the lure of a printed book still seduce these authors? Whatever the direction the file once created can potentially serve both.

Blackwell's Espresso on Sky News

This is Sky News piece on the Blackwell POD Espresso Book Machine. Its a pity the book just drops (literally) out!

BBC News Coverage of Blackwell's Print On Demand

Blackwell Steps Up To Local Print On Demand

We congratulate Blackwell for introducing the first Espresso print on demand machine on the UK High Street. It could start the logical shift we have long argued for, from print and distribute, to distribute and print. Overnight Blackwell’s Charing Cross store has gone from fixed inventory to a virtual inventory. No more special orders for titles available on demand, instead it’s just a short wait and it’s in the customer’s hand.

The pilot may not be as bullish as first announced, but if proven it could well be as widespread. The only downside is yet another ‘exclusive partnership’ between a retailer and technology supplier. However, it appears to be only an 18 months exclusive. The exclusive could be good for Blackwell, but we feel an open market could have raised greater awareness, driven down cost, encouraged different models and offers and moved the agenda forward quicker. On the other hand Blackwell’s may not have moved at all without the exclusive arrangements.

Out of the 400,000 books currently available on the Espresso, over a quarter of a million books were previously out of print and effectively not available from stores. By the end of April it is claimed that there will be in excess of a million titles.

So the big question now is how the public will react? Will they perceive any noticeable difference in quality? Will they mind the 5 minute wait? Can they be sold on the green credentials and virtual inventory? Will the footfall and demand in store be continual, or spiky and if the later, how long will a customer wait to be served? Will the machine be best hidden away, or in the shop window? How will customers know and be able to search the range of books available? The million titles be the right range?

We believe that the POD distributed model is an ideal vehicle to regenerate interest in back lists, provide public domain works and potentially service orphan works under licence, but once again it appears that the later may be restricted by another exclusive arrangement.

We hope the community POD machine works and that others are able, albeit after 18 months, to take advantage of the lessons that Blackwell will learn in the pilot.

Distribute the Files and Print the Book Locally at Last

The Bookseller reveal that the UK Academic bookseller Blackwell has reaffirmed its commitment to launch the instore Espresso Book Machine on 17th April.

The first machine will be installed as a pilot in its flagship Charing Cross branch on a pilot basis, producing books on demand for customers while they browse the shelves or enjoy a coffee. Blackwell had announced the move last year and many feared that the organisation departures and current climate would have impacted the decision but it clearly hasn’t and it will certainly by one to watch.

The placement within store and the promotion around its launch will be interesting to watch. We would have it in the shop window and in the face of the public but again we probably wouldn’t have chosen Charing Cross as the first store and probably picked Oxford.

The important things are that it is the first real move to a distribute and print model as opposed to print and distribute one and the other is to see the reaction of the public to POD books on the point of access and quality. Some would say that it’s a return to the days when a bookstore always had a press in the back!.

Penn University to Scan on Demand

The Google library scanning program has been very successful in its appeal to many libraries in scanning the public domain works and now many can potentially all benefit through access the Book Search.

The University of Pennsylvania libraries have gone a different route and announced a collaboration with Kirtas Technologies, who are a major automated scanning and digitization company, to trial scan on demand. Users will be able to order custom print-on-demand (PoD) editions from the 200,000 plus public domain works in the Penn library. However nothing will get scanned until an order is placed. Kirtas gains digital content for sale on its retail site, the Penn library’s digital collection grows by user demand and best of all the program is potentially self funding.

Other libraries are pursuing similar or different digital agendas. In 2007, Emory University initiated a similar program with Kirkus. Cornell has said it intends to increase its PoD offerings through its Amazon partnership, to over 80,000 titles and the library is currently engaged with Google in a program to create some 500,000 digitized books over the next six years. The University of Michigan Library is the first academic library to install an Espresso Book Machine PoD machine on campus.

This program to unlock the huge sleeping giant that is public domain can only be applauded and our concern has and will always be with respect to the ‘grey area’ of out of print but in copyright works and the many orphans that are current vulnerable to illegal adoption.

Lightning Sources Strikes 2 Million

Print on Demand (POD) is still relatively new but is now well established in the publishing world. In its inaugural year Lightning Source UK, a sister company to Lightning Source US and an Ingram company, produced some 30,000 books. Today some 8 years later it announced that it had printed over 2 million books in 2008. So what impact has POD really had and what has changed in those few years?

Traditional printing remains more a case of just in case than just in time with the calculation on the print run often being down to economics than hard sales. If you don’t print off a certain quantity you don’t get the price, if you don’t get the price you loose margin or potential sales and then there is always the special deals on offer to print that little extra you didn’t really want.

POD has had some significant success stories and no more so than Cambridge University Press whose program has now passed 11k titles and continues to question those titles that will still continue to generate small sales but would not justify a traditional print run.

But what is the right POD model is it aimed at short print runs, single copy fulfilment, self publishing? Which books suit it best? Is it only economic for textural and greyscale or can it compete on colour?

More interestingly is it aimed at perpetuating the print and distribute model or moving towards distribute and print and offering true local print facilities? If it merely reduces bulk inventory but creates or perpetuates titles stocked, is this merely shifting the cost from bulk to range? The same transport is required, handling will increase and holding more titles doesn’t guarantee more sales. The interesting Blackwell in-store experiment, like the Foyles one before it, has been scrapped and no one has stepped up to providing the community answer. Perhaps their isn’t an effective economic local model and we have to face the facts that we have replaced the big printer presses with new small POD presses, bulk with range and just lowered publisher risk.

The other side of POD is that it has moved the digital agenda forward. Some would say that POD has given Ingram a huge amount of ‘digital’ files on which to fuel Ingram Digital ventures and maybe that is what Amazon saw as the opportunity to replicate with their directives on Booksurge. Digital files can be a real asset when you are building a digital repository offer.

Lightening Source took bold steps, invested and grew to a dominant market position both in the US and UK. Although tradition printers followed, their actions weren’t as bold and their results today are far less impressive. Sounds a somewhat familiar story.

Is it Wise.Com - newprint on demand?

Imagine going into your local newspaper shop and being offered 890 newspapers from around the world, some 81 different countries and 38 languages. Today’s cosmopolitan society can read their own paper, not a day later, or shrunk to a foreign edition, but today and in full.



Sheth, manager of Zyn s News & Cigar on Greenwich Ave. Connecticut has embarked on this interesting print on demand venture last spring. NewspaperDirect, a Canadian company headquartered in Vancouver, puts the papers on its Internet system and then sends them to dealers such as Zyn’s.

Sheth's printer cost $30,000 to $40,000. A printout of a weekday newspaper costs approximately $3.50 to $6, while the charge for a weekend paper ranges from $7 to $10 and are based on the number of pages printed. It takes up to 15 minutes to print copies on both sides and to the paper’s format.

Customers can subscribe, call ahead, request colour and request back as far back as one year.

Given the technology investment and the low cost of the newsprint the capacity constraints and also community demand it makes us wonder at the wisdom of the approach.

The Future is Not Binary - Part 1

Publishing is a diverse and complex industry. Some would argue that it is many industries that have merely been brought together by a common format the book. These industries are diverging as a result of opportunities such as print on demand (POD) and digitisation (ebooks). Some would say that this heralds the end of the generalist publisher and retailer and promotes specialists both in terms of the development of content and rights and their sale to the channel and end consumer. Some may box the different publishing models and predict which will fail and which will succeed in the future. Publishing is and will remain diverse and complex and the one thing that is certain going forward is that there are no silver bullets and that its future is not binary.

If we look at POD, we have to understand that it is about manufacturing, inventory and distribution. We all know that it is not suitable for all, but that it is suitable for many. Its suitability is not always at title level and may even only be at a certain stage in the life cycle of a title. Some have long understood this and have successfully used POD to manage their production, inventory and distribution of their back list, retaining titles that would have been uneconomic to do so in the old model. Some have been able to do this because their rights model enabled them to effectively exploit the sunk cost and move fee based titles across. Many publishers who work on a royalty based model may find that their contract prohibit this approach.

POD is all things to all people. For many today, it represents short cycle print runs and enables them to reduce inventory. To others it is print on demand, sell one make one. To some retailers it offers localised printing and just in time not just in case stock control and responsive customer service. But by itself it is just digital production.

One of the most successful POD publishers is Cambridge University Press, who through their vision have built up a significant POD inventory of some 10,000 plus titles. Has this been economically successful? Yes. Has it been operationally successful? Yes. Is their model applicable to all even within their sector – probably not? I remember sitting down with three major publishers and two industry bodies at the advent of POD. The objective was to look at the systems and process implications of POD and establish the common way forward. The publishers could not even agree then of the definition, let alone the business model and processes.

Letter From America III

I was honoured to be invited to speak in Minneapolis at the National Association of College Stores (NACS) Innovate 2008 conference. The focus was about how the members could gain competitive advantage through technology. Campus stores are being squeezed by many and also face lots of new digital challenges.

The issues that face all campus stores are many and complex but are no different to those facing all bookstores. There are many questions:

Who are their customers?
How do they engage with their community?
Are student customers for life or just for a short time and why can’t they retain the customers past student life?
What do their customers want?
What is the size of their market and their percentage of this?

Once they have established where they are they have to decide where the want to be and how they get there. It is not about digitisation nor is it about technology – it’s about retail. The campus store is not dead it is merely changing and adapting to new opportunities. Will it survive – I believe so but it will be different and will be built on its existing relationships with its community and its publishers.

The following are the digital recommendations I left them with to consider:

1. Adopt Digital Drop Ship as the model to engage all bookstores into an effective channel for all publishers. Some would argue that the aggregators do this today but look at the exclusive models and demand more. You need an inclusive, integrated and independent model that is inclusive not exclusive and builds on the relationships you have today not one that merely put someone else between you and your supply.

2. Widgets. Ask yourself how you can maximise this within your environment to sell more books. You could even use them in-store to qualify stock you don’t carry. If I am right and they become ubiquitous, how are you going to manage them? I believe the association has a clear role to play to make sure the right widgets are created and distributed to its members in a way that they can be fully exploited and increase revenues today. Don’t wait for someone to sell you the package do it yourselves. Solutions here need to offer both development and be built to be ‘out of the box’

3. E Inspection copies. I believe you are integral to the process today and going forward. If you aren’t plugged into the process, where will the sales go? Only by working collectively and with others will the real benefits on offer here be realised. After all the reviewers are your customers, the students are your customers and the books are what you should be selling, so why wouldn’t you work with others to secure it?

4. Print on demand offers much but is a significant change. It may work in one store but not in another today. However if you became the first movers and viewed it as a local resource could it secure a bigger market. If you wait someone will do it first. That may be a competitor, a print shop, a library, even a coffee shop. What being a follower mean to your business and community relationships.

5. 508 is my last suggestion. This is not an individual store option today as much as a co-operative one which could provide high visibility, take away a painful exercise for publishers, provide a real service and relationship link to the thousands of disability officers and the solution is not difficult not expensive.

You can read the full presentation at http://www.value-chain.biz/Brave%20New%20World%20ii.htm