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Print on demand (POD), sometimes mistakenly referred to as publish on demand, is a printing technology employed by publishers in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until after an order for them has been received. "Print on Demand" developed only after the development of digital printing,^[1] because of the practical and economic difficulties of printing single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress or offset printing.

Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers, and many university presses and other academic publishers use POD services to maintain a large backlist while other academic presses use POD exclusively.^[2] Larger presses may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or doing test marketing.^[3]

Contents 1 Book publishing through POD 2 Other publishing through POD 3 POD service providers 4 Traditional publisher use 4.1 Maintaining availability 4.2 Managing uncertainty 4.3 Niche publications 5 Economics 6 Eco-Friendliness 7 See also 8 References 9 Bibliography 10 External links

Print on demand with digital technology is used as a way of printing items for a fixed cost per copy, irrespective of the size of the order. While the unit price of each physical copy printed is higher than with offset printing, when setup costs are taken into account digital print on demand provides lower per unit costs for very small print runs than offset printing methods.

While the unit cost of a book or print produced using POD is usually higher than one produced as part of a longer print run, POD does bring some key business benefits: 1) large inventories of a book or print do not need to be kept in stock, 2) the technical set-up is usually quicker and less expensive than for offset printing and 3) there is little or no waste from unsold products. These advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books and prints and can lead to increased choice for consumers. However, the reduced risks for the publisher can also mean that quality control is less rigorous than usual.

Digital technology is ideally suited to publish small print runs of posters (often as a single copy) as and when they are needed. The introduction of UV-curable inks and media for large format inkjet printers has allowed artists, photographers and owners of image collections to take advantage of print on demand. The National Gallery, London installed a print on demand system using HP printers and technology in their shop in July 2003. The system increased the number of images available as prints from 60 to 2,500 (almost all of the gallery's permanent collection).

The invention of POD led directly to a new category of publisher that offers services directly to authors who wish to self-publish, usually for a fee. These services generally include printing and distributing a book each time one is ordered, handling royalties and getting listings in online bookstores. The initial investment for POD services is usually less expensive when compared with self-publishing that uses print runs. Print-on-demand services offered by these providers often include other services such as formatting, proof reading and editing, etc. They do not typically offer help with marketing.

As of 2006, print on demand book publishing is growing in popularity. In the consumer market, this growth is especially strong among first-time authors as an affordable and easy way to get a book into print.

Print-on-demand services that offer printing and distributing services to publishing companies instead of directly to authors are also growing in popularity within the industry. The leading print-on-demand service providers for publishing companies are Lightning Source, a division of Ingram Book Group, a leading U.S. book wholesaler, and more recently BookSurge, an Amazon.com company.fact Replica Books is the POD arm of wholesaler Baker & Taylor, strong in library and academic markets, as well as bookstores in the Northeastern United States.^{[citation needed]}

Among traditional publishers, POD services can be used to make sure that books remain available when one print run has sold out but another has not yet become available, and to maintain the availability of older titles whose future sales may not be great enough to justify a further conventional print run. This can be useful for publishers with large back catalogs of older works, where sales for individual titles may be low, but where cumulative sales may be significant.

Print on demand can be used to reduce risk when dealing with "surge" titles that are expected to have large sales but a short sales life (such as celebrity biographies or event tie-ins): these titles represent high profitability but also high risk due to the danger of inadvertently printing many more copies than are necessary, and the associated costs of maintaining excess inventory or pulping. POD allows a publisher to exploit a short "sales window" with minimised risk exposure by "guessing low" - using cheaper conventional printing to produce enough copies to satisfy a more pessimistic forecast of the title's sales, and then relying on POD to make up the difference.

Print on demand is also used to print and reprint "niche" books that may have a high retail price but limited sales opportunities, such as specialist academic works. An academic publisher may be expected to keep these specialist titles in print even though the target market is almost saturated, making further conventional print runs uneconomic.

Many of the smallest small presses, often called micro-presses because they have inconsequential profits, have become heavily reliant on POD technology and ebooks. This is either because they serve such a small market that print runs would be unprofitable or because they are too small to absorb much financial risk.

Profits from print on demand publishing are on a per-sale basis, and royalties vary depending on the route by which the item is sold. Highest profits are usually generated from sales direct from the print-on-demand service's website or by the author buying copies from the service at a discount, as the publisher, and then selling them personally. Lower royalties come from traditional "bricks and mortar" bookshops and online retailers both of which buy at high discount. The higher the volume sold the lower the royalty inevitably becomes, as the retailer is able to buy at greater discount.

Because the per-unit cost is typically greater with POD than with a print run of thousands of copies, it is common for POD books to be more expensive than similar books that come from conventional print runs, especially if that book is produced exclusively with POD instead of using POD as a supplemental technology between print runs.

Book stores order books through a wholesaler or distributor, usually at high discount of anything up to 70 percent. Wholesalers obtain their books in two ways; either as a special order where the book is ordered direct form the publisher when a book store requests a copy, or as a stocked title which they keep in their own warehouse as part of their inventory. Stocked titles are usually also available via sale or return, meaning that the book store can return unsold stock for full credit at anything up to one year after the initial sale.

POD books are rarely if ever available on such terms because for the publishing provider it is considered too much of a risk. However, wholesalers keep a careful eye on what titles they are selling, and if an author works hard to promote their work and achieves a reasonable number of orders from book stores or online retailers (who use the same wholesalers as the bricks and mortar stores), then there is a reasonable chance of their work becoming available on such terms.

Although returnability lessens the risk for book stores and helps POD authors get through the door, such authors should also realize that there is only a certain proportion of stock that can be returned.

This difficulty with lack of returns can make bookstores less enthusiastic about POD books. This though is set to change in the future, as the industry is currently debating a move away from sale or return altogether, which will do much to level the playing field.^{[citation needed]}

Another issue with print-on-demand titles is the fact that they are often debut works.^{[citation needed]} Many book stores are reluctant to take a risk on an author's first, untested work without the endorsement of a commercial publisher.

One aspect of print on demand which is often overlooked is its eco-friendliness. Traditional lithographic printing uses vast amounts of not just paper, but also ink and chemicals. Each year thousands of unsold books and magazines are pulped as simply too many were printed. While the paper for some of these may have come from sustainable sources, it would be less of an environmental detriment to not use the resources to print in the first place. Print on demand eliminates this problem, since books are only printed when a definite order is placed. Books that are printed have therefore already been sold.

• Author mill
• Dynamic page publishing
• Muller Martini
• Self publishing
• Vanity press
• Variable data printing

• 2007 Writer's Market, Robert Lee Brewer & Joanna Masterson. (2006) ISBN 1-58297-427-6
• The Fine Print of Self-publishing: The Contracts & Services of 48 Major Self-publishing Companies, Mark Levine. (2006) ISBN 1-9335385-6-2
• Print on Demand Book Publishing, Morris Rosenthal (2004) ISBN 0-9723801-3-2

• Warnings and Cautions for Writers - warnings about the type of subsidy publishing that uses POD
• Print on Demand Publishing - a print-on-demand case study with costs and profits
• An Incomplete Guide to POD - a guide to POD service providers and subsidy publishers
• Self-Publishing, POD Technology and Author Mills - an explanation of the relationship between POD and these two business models