POD: Part 1 – What It Is
October 29, 2007 by Lillie
Table of contents for POD
At a recent Weekend Writers Cafe at Grow Your Writing Business, Genesis of At Home Mom Blog asked this question:
What do you think of using POD publishers? Which ones are good?
I pointed out that I wrote a little about POD in the Self-Publishing Primer but promised to write more about it. This is a topic of both great interest and great confusion to many writers.
POD stands for Print on Demand, sometimes called Publish on Demand.
It is simply a printing method, digital technology that enables a single book to be printed and bound very quickly. The unit cost is higher than other printing methods for medium to large quantities. However, small print runs (and even printing individual books) are feasible, and the unit cost is less for small quantities. You can read a case study at Foner Books Print on Demand.
Large commercial publishers, small press publishers, and self-publishers all use POD, but it’s often used by so-called POD publishers. Some call themselves self-publishing POD companies. However, they are really subsidy publishers, and some are probably vanity publishers. If you self-publish, the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is assigned to you (in the name of the publishing company you establish). If the ISBN for your book is assigned to another company, that someone is the publisher, not you.
You may decide that subsidy publishing is the best publishing method for you and your book, but make sure you base your decision on accurate information and a real understanding of the publishing industry. Don’t be misled into believing that you are self-publishing if you are, in fact, subsidy publishing.
You will find pros and cons of various kinds of publishing in the Self-Publishing Primer. In the next two installments in this series, we’ll assume you have made a choice. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of POD for self-publishing authors in the next post, then about the pros and cons of using a POD subsidy publisher.
This is a great series Lillie. I think you cover this topic very well. Many authors struggle with the question of how to best get printed copies of their books. We have authors who use PODs like LuLu and Author House who also print books with ZDocs. The reason they use both methods is the PODs can help them with the front-end work of getting their book designed and into distribution channels, but ZDocs can help them get larger quantities of their books printed for less money. I like Mark Levine’s book that compares 48 POD printers and highly recommend authors read his book. Deciding how to print books is not an easy decision, but if authors will talk to PODs and printers like ZDocs, they’ll begin to see the pros and cons of each method and then make the best decision for their book. But if an author is not aware of the different options, then he or she may fall victim to a good sales pitch. Even worse, an author might get mixed up with some of the shady companies like Publish America. You are helping authors go about this process with their eyes wide open and that is a very good thing. Thank you.
I’ve seen there are the links to other parts of your Print On Demand series. Good job, i appreciate it.
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