Advantages Of Print On Demand
Advantages Of Print On Demand
November 2007 put an end to the high costs of self-publishing with the advent of Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). From this time on the advantages of Print on Demand(POD) revolutionised the publishing industry.
Traditional publisher
Up until this point, the first option for getting a book published was to negotiate a publishing deal with a traditional publisher with the likes of Macmillan, Angus & Robertson, Allen & Unwin, Heinemann among many others.
Self-publish
The second option was to self-publish. This meant finding a printer to do a large print run and then having to distribute and sell the books yourself.
This old method of self-publishing meant risking $20,000, $30,000 or even more to self-publish a book.
If you had surplus funds to invest and you were prepared to risk that money then fine. But many authors were fearful of risking thousands of dollars to do a large print run.
You needed to get a return on the investment. Naturally, for many authors, this was a fearful thing to do. What if you didn’t succeed in getting your books sold?
If the author did not sell their books thousands of copies could end up sitting in boxes and boxes taking up space in the garage or someone else’s garage.
I saw this happen so many times. I even used to store boxes of books belonging to other authors in my own home.
A changed publishing landscape
The publishing landscape had changed.
- No more did authors have to get past the gatekeepers to land a traditional publishing deal.
- No more did authors have to self-publish and do a large print run.
- No more did authors have to face the high costs of getting their book designed, formatted and book cover made
- No more did authors have to invest in a large print run, then face the issues of storage, and how to get a return on investment
Advantages of Print On Demand
The concept of print on demand(POD) transformed the publishing world. Instead of investing large sums of money for giant print runs POD meant you could order and print just one book, or ten books, one hundred books or more. If you wanted just two paperbacks, for instance, you could order just the two.
Very simply the POD model allowed you to order a book, print a book, and be able to do this one at a time.
Amazon had set up two publishing platforms.
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) was Amazon’s eBook publishing platform and its CreateSpace used the POD model for paperbacks. In 2018 CreateSpace, however, merged into KDP so from that time on you could publish both Kindle eBooks and paperbacks on KDP.
POD eliminated the need to invest thousands of dollars doing large print runs. Substantial economic barriers had been removed and authors could publish their books on a low budget, as low as $200 or less, or even for nothing at all.
With the POD model, authors could market their books throughout the world, sell their works, and not have to worry about holding inventory, storing books, or monitoring stock levels.
Benefits of Amazon
One of the great benefits of publishing on Amazon was its domination of the world book market. Customers were there ready to buy and pay for books with their credit cards.
With just a click a Kindle eBook was delivered immediately to the free Kindle app on their computer, iPad or smartphone. Because of Amazon’s Expanded Distribution, both paperbacks and eBooks had access to global markets through the Amazon distribution channels.
Royalties were high – 70% for Kindle eBooks and 60% for paperbacks. Authors retained their rights, their books were published within hours, there was no need for inventory, and book cover and design tools were supplied.
While there might be some costs involved for the preparation of eBook and paperback manuscripts there was zero cost for actually publishing your work on Amazon. These benefits made publishing on Amazon a no brainer.
The concept of POD transformed the way you could publish a book.
Amazon was the game-changer.
Print On Demand is affordable
With POD, the costs associated with having inventory had gone. It was affordable, it was efficient, and you had the freedom of printing anywhere from one (1) to ten thousand (10,000) copies of a particular title.
Keeping your book in print is these days an outdated concept. With POD your book remains in an online database and it is only printed when it is required.
Given the escalation of interest in the new way to publish multiple companies, products and services are flourishing throughout the world that is specifically designed to service this new self-publishing industry.
Author and Coach
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Thank you Marj, very helpful.