Print on demand - Part One

How a new printing technology can allow you and your students to publish at little or no cost

by Gary Clites

Originally published in the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund’s Adviser Update, Spring 2008

Ridgeley and Carpendale, West Virginia, From 1750: A History is never going to be a bestseller. Frankly, there aren't enough people in Ridgeley, W.Va., to justify even a single letterpress print run of the book. That said, this small town across the river from Cumberland, Md., is steeped in history. George Washington took his first military command there and, as an investor in The Ohio Company, helped found the first settlement.

When my father began working on his book about my hometown five years ago, he had no idea how he would get it published. Today, using the new technology called Print on Demand (POD), I am in the process of publishing his book for him at almost no cost. This same technology can be a boon to communications teachers, allowing us to inexpensively make student work available for sale and to publish our own work, allowing us to share lesson plans, assignments and strategies.

In traditional book publishing, books are created using offset or letterpress technologies. In order to be economically viable, print runs need to be in the thousands or tens of thousands. Print on Demand uses digital printing technology, essentially the same system used by a laser printer or photocopier, to create books, pamphlets and other items, one at a time. Essentially, a POD printing press is a laser digital book creation machine hooked up to a computer. The computer holds thousands of book files, each of which can, at the push of a button, be printed when needed - thus "on demand." POD technology literally allows books to be printed one at a time as orders are received.

Print on Demand has created a revolution in the world of communications. In 2003, the National Gallery in London digitally scanned all 2,300 works in its collection. Installing a POD poster producing machine, they have since offered prints of every work they own for sale and have made a fortune selling them to patrons and online. Small press publishers, who were dying out a few years ago, are seeing a resurgence using the technology. Large publishers have embraced the system for keeping more of their backlist of classic books available.

Today, numerous Web-based companies offer Print on Demand services to creators of all types of media. Early in its life, POD technologies were mostly used to pump out six-by-nine inch trade paperbacks. Today, hard and softcover books of all sizes and types in both black and white and color are available. Beyond that, companies offer pamphlets, calendars, photo books, music CDs and even Video DVDs using the system. Almost anything you want to produce creatively can now be sold on demand.

How is the quality of POD? In the early days of the technology, there were marked differences between offset and on demand books. As the system has matured, quality has improved, and today most POD books would be indistinguishable from traditional books to the layman.

In terms of cost, POD books, etc. are actually more expensive to produce than are traditionally printed products. A 150-page trade paperback book produced in the tens of thousands using an offset press might be created for a little over a dollar a copy. The same book produced on Lulu, the POD publisher I am using for my father's book, will cost $7.53 for a single copy order (there are significant discounts for bulk orders). That sounds like a lot, but since the self-publisher cuts out the publishing company and their portion of the revenue, anything above that cost is profit. So, selling that 150-page paperback for, say, $13, the author would make a $5.47 cent profit, much more than the traditional 12 to 15 percent artist's royalty paid by most publishing companies.

Some on demand print companies online charge substantial fees that would make use of the technology by teachers and students prohibitive. The aforementioned Lulu (www.lulu.com) charges little or nothing for the service, making their profits entirely through the sale of POD products. You can upload a product to their Web site and, so long as you only sell copies through their bookstore, they will charge you absolutely nothing for the service. 

What if you want to market your product more widely? Most brick and mortar book stores have resisted stocking self-published POD books due to questions of quality (let's face it, there are a lot of grandmother's cookbooks and poorly written novels being produced this way) and cost. Most POD products are, therefore, sold online through sites like Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or Borders.com. To sell online or through bookstores, all printed products must have an ISBN number (International Standard Book Number) and must be registered individually with each Web site and listed in Books in Print. Lulu offers a distribution service that registers an ISBN number for your book, lists it for sale on online retailers and generates the Books in Print listing all for $99.95, a relative bargain.

What does all this mean to you? As communications teachers, we struggle to get our students' work read and seen. Print on Demand technology offers us a new, inexpensive channel for getting that work out there. Why not print your school's literary magazine using POD then make it available to parents and students on Amazon? How about developing a long-term journalism project for your students then publishing the results as a book? Lulu even offers yearbook publication in full-color at prices and profit margins that appear to me to be competitive with traditional publishing companies. Further, they suggest scanning the pages of out-of-print yearbooks, and offering reprints for sale to alumni and others online - a viable money making plan.

The technology can also be used to help educators share their own work. If you're a veteran teacher with years of materials you've developed, why not edit them together into a book and offer them for sale to other teachers? Strategies, theories and plans for communications education? Write them up and put them on Amazon. 

Print on Demand offers great potential for journalism teachers as a way to share their work as well as their students'. Next issue, we'll focus on the nitty gritty of how to publish using the online Print on Demand process. If you're interested, Lulu, like most POD publishers, offers substantial how-to info on their page, and there are a number of books available on the subject for sale through Amazon and printed on demand.

© Gary Clites, 2008