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Print On Demand



 
 
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  #1  
Old January 12th 05, 02:35 PM
Bob
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Default Print On Demand

Now that POD technology has advanced to the point where making a single copy
run is profitable, how does one determine a 1st edition, 1st printing?

--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com


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  #2  
Old January 12th 05, 09:52 PM
Francis A. Miniter
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Bob wrote:

Now that POD technology has advanced to the point where making a single copy
run is profitable, how does one determine a 1st edition, 1st printing?




Hi Bob,

Profitable, if sold for a small fortune. The prices I have seen for
individual printings of some older books (probably past copyright) are
very high. This method of publication is unlikely to gain much of a
foothold in the publishing industry. It will always be cheaper to do a
run of 25,000 books than to print books individually. Since cost
matters to the buying public, the traditional publishing medium is
likely to comfortably hold its own for the foreseeable future.

On the assumption that a new book is actually published in the manner
you describe, it would be possible for the publisher to individually
annotate the volume with "27th Copy Printed" or something like that.

But how is any work going to gain either critical respect or popular
acclaim if printed in this manner? The age of the monograph is over.
The ability for significant numbers to read and evaluate the book is
needed for either respect or acclaim. Let us assume that an individual
printing and binding involves three people, machinery and about 15
minutes of time, so that 4 books could be printed in an hour. With an
8 hour work day, 32 copies could be printed a day, or about 640 in a
month. To get to 25,000 copies, an amount sometimes used for first runs
of first printings from unknown fiction writers, would take 40 months.
Running three shifts would still take over 13 months. Who in their
right minds is going to publish a serious work in that manner?

On the other hand, if you are going to have multiple little setups, you
increase manpower unreasonably and quickly bump up against the more
efficient methods of mass publishing.

On the third hand, would large publishers take up small runs? I tend to
think not. Paper stock, paper size, boards and binding materials, all
vary substantially from book to book as things now stand. The cost of
constantly shifting input materials would raise costs excessively for
large printers. The alternative would be uniformity of all book sizes,
appearance, etc. This too is unlikely to be the wave of the future.
The desire for profit tends to push publishers to make their book
distinctive from the competition - even competition from within their
own firm - so that the eye will pick out the desired book from a
distance. Who wants to go into a bookstore where the books all have the
uniformity of Army Manuals?

Finally, as the population continues to burgeon - the USA alone is now
up to about 295,000,000, the need for larger, not smaller runs, will
continue to dominate.


Francis A. Miniter
  #3  
Old January 13th 05, 02:41 PM
Bob
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"Francis A. Miniter" wrote
Profitable, if sold for a small fortune. The prices I have seen for
individual printings of some older books (probably past copyright) are
very high. This method of publication is unlikely to gain much of a
foothold in the publishing industry. It will always be cheaper to do a
run of 25,000 books than to print books individually. Since cost
matters to the buying public, the traditional publishing medium is
likely to comfortably hold its own for the foreseeable future.


American Web Books, a subsidiary of Applewood Books, plans to reprint
juvenile (and other types I suppose) books with print runs as low as1.
Their current threshold is 100 copies but they announced that evolving
technology will make a print run of 1 profitible at the same retail price
(usually about $20 or so.)


--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com


  #4  
Old January 13th 05, 03:23 PM
John Pelan
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On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:41:27 -0500, "Bob"
wrote:

"Francis A. Miniter" wrote
Profitable, if sold for a small fortune. The prices I have seen for
individual printings of some older books (probably past copyright) are
very high. This method of publication is unlikely to gain much of a
foothold in the publishing industry. It will always be cheaper to do a
run of 25,000 books than to print books individually. Since cost
matters to the buying public, the traditional publishing medium is
likely to comfortably hold its own for the foreseeable future.


American Web Books, a subsidiary of Applewood Books, plans to reprint
juvenile (and other types I suppose) books with print runs as low as1.
Their current threshold is 100 copies but they announced that evolving
technology will make a print run of 1 profitible at the same retail price
(usually about $20 or so.)


Well, I would dispute that a print run of 1 could be profitible unless
they have Barker's book fairies performing scanning and layout for
free. ;-) Still, if these are difficult texts to find in the original
and you really want them, I suppose this type of presentation is okay.
I'll have to admit that I do own ONE POD title; a favorite author had
his early short stories collected in an editiion from Wildside Press
and since it's unlikely that any other edition will ever exist, I
bought the hardcover. I do find it hard to believe that any book
worth doing 100 copies of isn't worth doing 300-500, and once you hit
that number, conventional printing is going to be more cost-effective.

POD remains the easy answer for people whose entire concept of
marketing is putting up a website and hoping that customers stumble
across it.

Cheers,

John





  #5  
Old January 14th 05, 06:05 AM
Willow Arune
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In my collection, I must have over 40 POD.

I suppose it depends on the collection, but TS writers are simply not
published by the general trade press. So many go POD, unless they have a
pre-existing publication contract (i.e. Boylan, McCloskey).

I think given the nature of the beast that any copy following the exact
wording of the first - hard or softcover, is a first edition, first
printing. One simply has to allow for technology. In some limited cases,
the first 50 or XX are marked in some way. Richard Docter's book had the
first 50 autographed, hand numbered and also signed by the subject. With
the Hornblower book, the first 50 were signed by Douglas Reeman and given a
special insert. Each of the 500 was hand numbered, not generally possible
with POD.

As an alternative, any POD in my collection is signed by the writer and the
envelope retained for provenance.

Lulu Publishing will do runs of one, but there may be problems with pages
missing and such, which their site refers to. Others wait until a certain
number is reached. Contacting the writer generally means you can have the
book sent to them, they sign it and forward it to you. Simply write c/o the
publishing house.

Another difficulty is an e-book. In my case, those are copied to CD and
them the writer is invited to make up a cover and sign it, or I sent it to
them. those are stored with the collection.








"John Pelan" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 08:41:27 -0500, "Bob"
wrote:

"Francis A. Miniter" wrote
Profitable, if sold for a small fortune. The prices I have seen for
individual printings of some older books (probably past copyright) are
very high. This method of publication is unlikely to gain much of a
foothold in the publishing industry. It will always be cheaper to do a
run of 25,000 books than to print books individually. Since cost
matters to the buying public, the traditional publishing medium is
likely to comfortably hold its own for the foreseeable future.


American Web Books, a subsidiary of Applewood Books, plans to reprint
juvenile (and other types I suppose) books with print runs as low as1.
Their current threshold is 100 copies but they announced that evolving
technology will make a print run of 1 profitible at the same retail price
(usually about $20 or so.)


Well, I would dispute that a print run of 1 could be profitible unless
they have Barker's book fairies performing scanning and layout for
free. ;-) Still, if these are difficult texts to find in the original
and you really want them, I suppose this type of presentation is okay.
I'll have to admit that I do own ONE POD title; a favorite author had
his early short stories collected in an editiion from Wildside Press
and since it's unlikely that any other edition will ever exist, I
bought the hardcover. I do find it hard to believe that any book
worth doing 100 copies of isn't worth doing 300-500, and once you hit
that number, conventional printing is going to be more cost-effective.

POD remains the easy answer for people whose entire concept of
marketing is putting up a website and hoping that customers stumble
across it.

Cheers,

John







  #6  
Old January 16th 05, 10:48 PM
Francis A. Miniter
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Bob wrote:
"Francis A. Miniter" wrote

Profitable, if sold for a small fortune. The prices I have seen for
individual printings of some older books (probably past copyright) are
very high. This method of publication is unlikely to gain much of a
foothold in the publishing industry. It will always be cheaper to do a
run of 25,000 books than to print books individually. Since cost
matters to the buying public, the traditional publishing medium is
likely to comfortably hold its own for the foreseeable future.



American Web Books, a subsidiary of Applewood Books, plans to reprint
juvenile (and other types I suppose) books with print runs as low as1.
Their current threshold is 100 copies but they announced that evolving
technology will make a print run of 1 profitible at the same retail price
(usually about $20 or so.)


I found the following listing for a POD version of the first American novel.
Not exactly cheap, and it is only half the book.


Francis A. Miniter


The power of sympathy. Volume 2 [Buy it!]

Brown William Hill. 63.70 Abebooks AstroLogos Books

Book-On-Demand Reprint from edition originally published: N. Y. Facsimile Text
Society 1937. BRAND NEW HARDCOVER Print-to-order B&W REPRINT of original book
published:N. Y. Facsimile Text Society 1937. 162 Pages Reprinted from microfilm
of original text on acid-free archival quality paper - HARDCOVER - Charts
photographs & graphics may reproduce less than perfectly & may be reduced to fit
pages. SPECIAL ORDER Allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. No Refund or Exchange
unless not as described. [East Hampton, NY, U.S.A.]
  #7  
Old January 19th 05, 10:32 PM
Andy Dingley
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On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 16:21:50 -0000, "michael adams"
wrote:

Another problem with POD presumably is binding. I asssume all POD
books are perfect bound using industial PVA or similar adhesives.
And that none are stitched using thread.


There's no reason why POD should use any one binding method rather
than another. I've already seen high-end POD demonstrations where
they were provided to a craft binder and emerged in a half-calf
binding. POD, as a technology, can address either end of the market.
It's this market demand that will determine where its products end up.

  #8  
Old January 20th 05, 12:39 AM
Andy Dingley
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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:02:39 -0000, "michael adams"
wrote:

I somehow imagined that they printed POD on A3 lasers or
similar, on a limited range of suitable papers.


I've not worked on POD, but I used to work in the research lab of a
well-known printer company. Some of my old project team went on to do
POD, using a printer that filled a room and was reputed to have cost
around 1/4 million. It printed pretty much anything you wanted, on
anything you wanted. If you wanted the output as loose pages ready for
hand sewing, trimming and binding, then it was quite capable of doing
it.

Much of the research aspect was in how to integrate its raw capacity
for putting marks on paper into a smooth process for making
deliverable books. We also had a collaborative project with MIT doing
digitisation work on much of their library stacks.

A little project I'm interested in myself is getting a few 17th
century natural history rarities reprinted and bound in a small
edition. This POD rig may well be part of it.


These days an A3 colour laser is just something a small business picks
up cheaply off eBay, as a means of saving printing costs for its
monthly colour catalogue. _Real_ on-demand print is far in advance of
that level.

  #9  
Old January 22nd 05, 05:01 PM
Fred Froogle
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I'm not sure if this is the correct broup to post this, but how would you go
about getting a book reprinted. I have several rare antique books that some
of my friends would like copies of. I would need about 100-500 copies of
each. Would I have to scan/OCR them, photocopy, or take digital pictures of
the pages? Is there a POD company that does large folio sized books? Is
there any copyright issues to deal with if you take an ebook of a book that
is in the public domain and get a couple hundred printed, or do you have to
get a printed copy and do the work yourself?

Sorry for the deluge of questions, and much thatnks in advace for your
patience and answers.

Fred


"Bob" wrote in message
...
Now that POD technology has advanced to the point where making a single

copy
run is profitable, how does one determine a 1st edition, 1st printing?

--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com




  #10  
Old January 23rd 05, 02:22 AM
Al Smith
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I'm not sure if this is the correct broup to post this, but how would you go
about getting a book reprinted. I have several rare antique books that some
of my friends would like copies of. I would need about 100-500 copies of
each.


You've got more friends than I do.

Would I have to scan/OCR them, photocopy, or take digital
pictures of
the pages?


If they are, as you say rare antique books, you will probably want
a photographic facsimile of each page, complete with worm holes,
water stains and fly specks. On the other hand, if you merely wish
to reproduce the text in a nice, new binding, scanning and optical
character recognition would be the way to go.

Is there a POD company that does large folio sized books?

Don't know.

Is
there any copyright issues to deal with if you take an ebook of a book that
is in the public domain and get a couple hundred printed, or do you have to
get a printed copy and do the work yourself?


No copyright issues. It doesn't matter how much work some other
person has put into scanning an e-book -- if that book is in the
public domain, that person has no control over the use of the
text, and you can take the e-book and do whatever you want with
the text it contains.

You may not be able to merely redistribute the e-book itself, if
the formatting used is extensive and unique. The look of a book
can be copyrighted, along with any additional materials such as an
index, introduction, added illustrations, and so on. The text
itself is as much yours as it is the guy's who lifted it from
somebody else's efforts.
 




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