Print on Demand (POD)

Print on Demand is a printing technology in which a copy is not created until after an order is received. Using traditional printing technology, such as linocut, Gutenberg letter press or offset printing, it is quite complicated, if not impossible in economic and practical terms, to print a single unit of something. This is why Print on Demand developed only after digital printing was invented. Many presses use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or doing test marketing.

Book publishing through POD

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.

Maintaining availability

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 very large back-catalogues of older works, where sales for individual titles may be low, but where cumulative sales may be significant.

Managing Uncertainty

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.

Niche Publications

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.

Economics

Profits from Print On Demand publishing are on a per sale basis, and the amount of commission often varies 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. Lowest commission usually come from sales from "bricks and mortar" bookshops, with on-line bookstores falling somewhere in between.
Because the per-unit cost is typically greater with BOD 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 print runs, especially if that book is produced exclusively with POD instead of using POD as a supplemental technology between print runs. One of the biggest advantages of the POD business model is saving on warehousing expenses and on unsold books.