"Print On Demand" (or "POD") is a term applied to two different printing/publishing models: a) The "One Off" or "True" POD model, b) The "Digital Short Run" POD Model.

a. The "One-At-A-Time" or "One-Off" POD Model

The original POD concept was that a book would be printed only after it was sold. A consumer places an order for a particular book; the order is forwarded to a printing facility where the book is printed and bound "on-demand", and shipped to the bookstore or direct to the consumer. A variation envisions a printing/binding machine located in the bookstore to produce the book on the spot. In either case the books are printed on digital-laser, LED, or inkjet-printing devices, not on traditional offset presses. BookMobile does not produce books one at a time; instead BookMobile combines "Digital Short Run" printing (below) and fulfillment services to produce the benefits of one-off POD.

b. The "Digital Short Run" POD Model

Digital printing equipment can be used economically to print books in much lower quantities than the 1,000 or so minimum run for offset printing. In the mid-90s a few pioneers (including BookMobile) began producing books in runs of 10 to 3,000 copies using this type of equipment. The term "Print On Demand" has become attached to this model of production, despite the fact that "Digital Short Run Book Printing" is a better description. (Much like the inaccurate term "Desktop Publishing" became attached to what would be better described as "WYSIWIG Microcomputer Page Layout." Catchiness counts.) Digital Short Run printing can be combined with warehousing and distribution to achieve almost all of the benefits of "One-Off" POD.

Advantages: The primary advantage is that the expense of printing the book doesn't occur before the sale of the book. Therefore, the initial cost of inventory is only the cost of setting up the digital files to print the book when an order occurs. Also, the book can be kept in print indefinitely because storage costs are minimal and, unlike printing using offset printing presses, the publisher doesn't have to print 1,000 or more copies at a time for cost reasons. Disadvantages: One disadvantage is that it takes a very large investment to control quality and to manage a flow of books printed one copy at a time. A second disadvantage is that bookstores and wholesalers do not order stock of books printed one-at-a-time. Therefore such books are always "special order", which diminishes sales. Higher unit production costs-compared with offset-can also make it difficult to give a book an attractive retail price.

From the point of view of a publisher with a large "backlist" of older titles whose future demand is hard to predict, this model is hard to beat. Academic and scholarly publishers in particular have been very successful with this model, converting thousands of titles to one-at-a-time POD availability, increasing sales and reducing warehousing costs.

Advantages: Better quality control and potentially lower unit cost, compared with "One Off" POD. Also allows production of stock for wholesalers and retailers to order, which they do. (Our Digital Short Run POD books are sold all the time through traditional bookselling channels and only a printer can tell them from offset-printed books.) Compared to offset printing, Digital Short Run POD can produce much lower quantities of books: as few as 10 vs. 1,000+. This allows warehousing a couple of cartons and reprinting as frequently as demand requires, drastically reducing the amount of space-and storage cost-required per title. BookMobile provides this warehousing and fulfillment service through Itasca Books, a sister company.
Disadvantages: "Digital Short Run" POD does not totally eliminate warehousing and inventory costs as "One Off" POD does. And at run lengths greater than 1,500 offset becomes much more competitive as the cost-per-book decreases rapidly. Furthermore, for a publisher who's sales model is to scatter thousands of books out to bookstores through the services of sales rep advances-knowing that 30%+ will be returned unsold-the only rational printing model is minimizing unit cost through the use of offset printing. Higher unit production costs-compared with offset-can also make it difficult to give a book printed via "Digital Short Run" an attractive retail price.

"Digital Short Run" POD is best used: a) when the title is expected to sell more than 100 but fewer than 1,000 copies per year, b) when the publisher wishes to minimize the initial investment in a title, but wishes to sell through bookstores. According to the Book Industry Study Group, small publishers release about 50,000 new titles per year. The average number of copies printed is 3,800; the average life of the book is nine years, or 420 sold per year. For many of these 50,000 titles Digital Short Run POD is optimum because of the savings in initial printing costs and storage costs-especially considering that if demand actually justifies it, the publisher can switch from Digital Short Run to offset at any time.

Advantages: At longer run lengths-roughly above 1,500 copies-traditional offset book printing is almost always less expensive per copy than printing books digitally. So in cases where storage costs and the cost of investing in a longer run are balanced by the fact that the books sell relatively fast, it's a no-brainer to use offset printing. Also, for the highest quality printing of photographs and artwork offset still beats digital printing-though the technology landscape is changing rapidly in this area.

Disadvantages: There are hundreds of millions of copies of books printed on offset equipment that never sell and are ultimately destroyed. This is partly a distribution problem, but it is also because offset equipment produces books most efficiently at longer run lengths. The publisher pays not only for the offset printed books that don't sell, but for storing them, for interest on the money invested in the print run and in the loss of other opportunities to use the cash.

Traditional offset book printing is best used: a) when the title is expected to sell more than 2,000 copies per year, b) when the publisher wishes to maximize the quality of images reproduced in the book or c) the publishers sales model involves advancing (consigning) thousands of copies of the book to bookstores with the expectation that many will be returned unsold.

For books consisting of type and lineart (black and white drawings or artwork with no graytones), pages printed by skilled printers on digital equipment are equal to or better than pages printed on offset equipment. For books with photographs or artwork in the text in black on uncoated paper, offset generally beats digital, though digital printers can be used to print grayscale photos on coated paper sections to almost match offset quality. Paperback binding is an operation utilizing similar binding machines, so offset and digital have equivalent inherent quality. For hardcover binding offset printers generally print on large sheets which are folded into signatures and the folding enables sewn bindings--although most offset-printed hardcover books are NOT sewn, but glued. Short run digital printers often offer adhesive fan binding, which was originally developed as a way to bind books for libraries. As libraries have high binding-quality standards, fan-binding is an excellent method of binding hardcovers.

For all types of offset printing and for POD the pages and cover are first converted into digital files optimized for printing in a production setting. These print files can be produced by a) taking apart a previous edition copy of the book and scanning the cover and pages, or b) producing the print file from cover and text files produced using page layout programs such as Quark Xpress, Adobe InDesign, or Pagemaker. Because most professional graphic artists use Apple Macintoshes, most printers are set up primarily to print from Mac files. Files produced in Windows applications must sometimes be converted to Adobe Acrobat PDF files to send to the printer. A PDF file produced properly in a professional page layout program on either a Mac or Windows PC is the ideal file to send to a printer. Special note: Microsoft Word files are prone to many printing problems: unless you like headaches-both in layout and printing-don't produce your book pages in Microsoft Word.

We often get the question, "How much will it cost to print a book?" This is the same thing as asking "How much does it cost to build a house?". The answer depends on how big the house is, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, what quality of materials are used, etc. In the case of books, the basic parameters any printer needs to know to give you a price are:

a. Page size
b. Number of pages, including roman numeraled frontmatter and blanks
c. Number of copies you want
d. What originals you will be providing for the cover and text
e. What kind of paper stock is used for the cover and text
f. Whether the text prints in black or in 4-color process (full color)
f. What kind of binding is required
g. Shipping

Scanning and placing images, inserts for photo sections, changes you make, special shipping requirements, etc. all affect price. Also, unquantified factors such as superior customer service, better quality control, and better packing materials affect the price, even though on the face of it the service described by the printer including these features appears to be the same as the service described by the printer who skimps.

As mentioned above, "One Off" POD books automatically include some form of distribution linkage, usually solely through traditional book channels. "Digital Short Run" POD books may or may not include distribution as an option. Through our sister company Itasca Books, we offer a distribution service which includes 800#, mailorder, and web order fulfillment, as well as distribution through book wholesalers, bookstores and online booksellers.

Color digital printing equipment has evolved to have high quality potential: unfortunately it also is extremely expensive to operate. So color POD books have not taken off in the same way that black and white POD books have-yet. Color POD books are finding non-traditional uses, however, such as photographers or artists books, personal memoirs/family histories, memory books covering events such as weddings, graduations, sports teams, etc.

These FAQs were written by Don Leeper, who founded BookMobile in 1996. Leeper has been involved in book design and production since 1982, when he started Stanton Publication Services, a full-service book design and production house. He has presented and appeared on many Print On Demand panels at publisher, printer and museum conferences. He can be reached at dleeper@bookmobile.com.