Print On Demand Printing Questions

The published version of Print-on-Demand Book Publishing can be purchased direct from the publisher, from online bookstores, or ordered through your local bookshop.

$14.95 from Amazon

Self Publishing

Questions? Comments?

Quality, Book Distribution and Publishers

Question) What Print on Demand companies print books of any cut size and orientation?

Answer) The only POD printers of note besides Lightning Source are Booksurge and Replica. Of the two, Replica has better distribution (though they use Baker&Taylor rather than Ingram), and Booksurge has better international connections. Unfortunately, neither really meets the economic model Lightning Source currently offers. The problem with Baker&Taylor (Replica) is that they primarily supply libraries, and in my experience, they just aren't very good at take orders. Booksurge currently uses Marketplace to get books into Amazon and primarily drop-ships to stores, far more complicated than Lightning Source's direct book distribution tie-ins.

Q) Is Print on Demand quality as good as the trades?

A) To the average eye it looks fine, to the educated eye, all POD books look like they were printed on a laser printer, which they are. That's why you want to avoid weak fonts. What you're really comparing is toner based printing (POD) vs offset press printing. Many trades use print-on-demand and many small publishers use offset.

Question. My printer estimates a cost of $10 per book at quantity 500 for 288 pages. Is that a good price?

A) Way too much for a 288 page paperback, would cost you around $5 per with POD, maybe a buck less on offset at quantity 500, closer to $3 at quantity 1000. However, if you go offset, you'll have the whole distribution headache.

Q) We are a printer of POD books and would like to talk with you about our pricing.

A) My model for print on demand is built on Lightning Source's ability to get books into Ingram distribution, Amazon and B&N at a short discount, which makes the actual printing cost disappear. If you have integrated distribution services that directly reach the major retailers, I would be curious to hear about it.

Q) I want my print on demand book to have a CD on the back cover. Can Lightning Source do that?

A) Not at the time I'm writing this. I'm not aware of any major POD printer currently offering that service.

Q) Do you think my book about using Microsoft Office will work well for POD self-publishing?

A) No. It's too long, and more importantly, screen shot quality is poor in print-on-demand books.

Q) Does print-on-demand mean next-day availability at stores and within3-5 days shipping at Amazon?

A) Lightning Source books for Ingram distribution ship in less than 24 hours. However, the facility is in TN, so delivery to stores can take a week or more, depending on how many times a week the stores order (most bunch orders to save on shipping). However, Amazon is direct with Lightning Source, and they work according to an internal logic of their own. Slow-selling print on demand books are usually in stock for 24 hour shipping at Amazon, simply because the single copy they order for stock is usually there. Stronger titles are usually on 7 to 11 day delivery, because Amazon started capping orders of non-returnable POD books this past summer. I suspect it was due to some authors ordering quantities of their own books and then canceling.

Q) Should I use print on demand to print a couple copies of an essay I've written on my Mac?

A) No, it's for commercial printing. All you need is a decent local print shop, they have multiple ways of doing single copies, including the printer part of print-on-demand. The type of computer you use is irrelevant, it's the files that are produced.

Q) Should I use POD to publish my family scrapbook? It's mainly color, with photos, certificates, etc.

A) If it's only for family interest, it's only a question of printing, book publishing is a whole business. You can get excellent quality from color copiers, or you can talk to your local copy shops or printers to see what they offer.

Q) My book was published by company X but they've sold out to PublishAmerica. Now I see the publisher listed online as Lightning Source, do you know what's going on?

A) Lightning Source is a printer, not a publisher. They also fill a distribution role, which is why I use them. See my case study of print on demand publishing costs. Just keep in mind that marketing is the main job in the publishing business.

Q) I just received a shipment of 16 books from Lightning Source in the UK and the printing quality of the text is unacceptable. Please adjust the printing and send me a new batch immediately.

A) You'll have to write your Lightning Source rep with that question. I use them as a printer and I've written about them, but I'm not associated in any way with their business. If the printing quality is bad, they should ask you to return the books and provide replacements. I've had over five thousand books printed by them at this point and I've only had one customer complaint on quality, so you may have just gotten a bad batch. You might also consider using a stronger font if the problem isn't due to the print run, thinner fonts do poorly with toner based mass production.

Q) I've written a new book titled X. The freelance editors I hired suggest I use Central Plains Book Manufacturers in Kansas and a local book distributor for storing the books and fulfilling orders. Do I have to pay Ingram and Baker & Taylor listing fees to sell my books, and how about Amazon.com?

A) I don't have any familiarity with Central Plains outside of magazine ads, but who you choose for an offset printer if you go that route is the least important bit of the equation. Distribution is critical, make sure you understand their deal BEFORE you think about assigning a price to your book or decide on a print run. The Ingram and Baker&Taylor publications aren't important in my experience, but Ingram distribution certainly is, they account for more than half of my sales. In any case, I'm not aware of either of Ingram accepting books for distribution based on listing fees, and the only reason for having a local distributor would be so you don't have to worry about all that stuff. Amazon will sell anybody's books, it's just a question of whether you want to work direct with them (and eat all the shipping charges plus a 55% discount), have a distributor do it, or do Print-On-Demand and make more money.

It really depends what your ultimate goal for the book is. If it's to come to the notice of trade publishers and try to land a fat contract, you're probably best off starting with Print-on-Demand (Lightning Source) for both flexibility, to limit your exposure, and to maximize distribution. If you plan to really launch a publishing company, go on the road, etc, then you might be better off with the higher offset quality and a distributor who might actually help you sell book. If you're going to go the offset route, the most important thing you can do is to invest some serious time in investigating distributors. Too many of them are rip-offs, and few can actually help you sell books. Talk to them on the phone, get the names of other printers who are using the, and then talk to those printers. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions of both the distributor and the references. It's a business, and people who aren't willing to share some numbers are usually hiding something.

Q) How about Booksurge or Replica instead of Lightning Source?

A) Lightning Source is the back end for pretty much the whole industry, sort of in the Microsoft position. Booksurge tries hard to compete, but they don't have the direct ties with Ingram or Amazon, and they have their own pricing schemes, unlike Lightning Source which lets you set your own discount. The only other serious contender is Replica, who doesn't have the Ingram tie-in, but has a direct relationship with Baker&Taylor and B&N (if I recall) and a friend tells me they have recently lowered their prices to be competitive with Lightning Source. However, Replica is very old-school, no website to speak of for automated workflow and they can take weeks (or months) to approve a new publisher.

Q) A publisher here in the U.K. wants my book, but is it reasonable for them to charge me 3,000 pounds (equivalent almost $6000 U.S.)?

A) No, that is highway robbery. It's the old-fashioned vanity press model. I assume this means they are doing offset rather than print on demand, but it's still a ton of money. You could easily hire professionals to do whatever setup services they are providing and print books for a fraction of the cost. It's a travesty that they even call themselves a "publisher."

Q) I've just received a short run of paperbacks from Lightning Source and they look great, except for being warped. Are they all like that?

A) It depends what you mean by warped. If you mean they're a bit wavy if you lay one flat, I've seen that quite a bit, though they usually flatten themselves in a little time. It may have to do with a different moisture content in the cover and in the book pages, since they are printed with different processes on different stocks. In addition to the normal distribution channels, I've sold around 1000 or so books direct and have only had one quality complaint, even though all of those people know how to contact me. Now that I think of it, that complaint wasn't generated by a direct sale, it was a guy who bought a book from a Borders and claimed some pages in the middle had faded print. I sent him a new book with an SASE to return the bad copy, but he claimed to have thrown it out by mistake, wonder if he returned it for credit:-)

Q) I went to a publishing seminar where the speaker, a leading expert, claimed it costs $8 to have a book printed by print on demand. You quoted $3.09 for your first POD book with Lightning Source and Ingram at quantity 1. Please explain the difference.

A) The numbers for publishing and printing are different because he was talking about a specific instance with a high page count book. Any POD printer will base the cost on page count. For Lightning Source paperbacks, it's around a penny and a half a page (a little less) plus ninety cents for the cover.

Question. Should I buy 100 books from my POD subsidy publisher at half price to sell from my website?

A) Why buy a hundred? Buy 10 and find out if you can sell them. If you can really sell a hundred, hire your own editor next time and publish yourself.

Q) Why did Borders order a copy of my Lightning Source book direct from me when it's carried by Ingram?

A) We get the occasional order direct from Borders, used to get them from Barnes&Noble as well, but now they are direct with Lightning Source. We've always call the store to find out why they are ordering direct, since they usually don't give a reason, they just send a purchase order. The answer is always some variation of their having checked stock at all four Ingram warehouses, and found the title wasn't in stock at any of them. Since only two Ingram warehouse (TN and OR) stock Lightning Source books, it's quite easy for them to run out of stock any time there's a run on books. Hopefully, this problem will disappear in 2005 when Ingram starts showing virtual inventory for books they know they can have ready to ship in less than 24 hours.

Q) Should I sell my books through Amazon Advantage and Marketplace to minimize the impact of shipping delays frequently seen with POD books?

A) Selling the book through Marketplace solves the problem for people who are willing to order from Marketplace. I used to sell through Marketplace when my availability was bad but I haven't bothered lately, doesn't seem to have an impact. Advantage solves the problem (once the proper rhythm is established) but you have to pay for the shipping and sell to Amazon at a 55% discount, instead of the short discount, free shipping available through Lightning Source.

Q) Does participation in Advantage guarantee 24 hour shipping?

A) Not at all. We've had offset printed books in Advantage for years, and when the sales rate falls, they go to ordering one at a time. That means every time you sell a book that they only stock one copy off, it's out of stock until they order and receive the next one from you.

Q) If you're selling 2000 copies a year of a book, aren't you much better off printing offset?

Answers: Absolutely not! If I printed traditionally, I'd be stuck doing fulfillment. Both Amazon and Ingram (plus whoever else) get the books direct from LSI, doesn't cost me a dime in shipping and handling. While I end up paying LSI $3.09 a copy to print these books, I get to sell them at the short discount of my choice (35% originally, now 25%), which I couldn't do if I printed them traditionally. Ignoring the shipping and handling, the 20% difference in discount on this $14.95 book basically means I'm getting the books for free! If I recall Poynter's formula that people talk about, you have to price books at 8X the printing cost. My book is priced at less than 5X the printing cost, yet I always earn 44% or greater on the cover price. The reason I'm repeating this rather than saying "read the article again" is that I understand how hard it is to believe - I didn't believe it myself at first. I've already gotten around a dozen e-mails from that PMA article, people trying to explain to me that Ingram now gets 60% discount from small publishers, etc. They just don't believe what I've written. The LSI model is a complete departure from the traditional publishing model of the last decade or so.

Q) We are using Lightning Source and we would like to outsource all the design; typesetting, layout, cover design. Can you suggest somebody?

A) Anybody who does book design can do it, there's no special knowledge required, and all of the necessary settings and templates are available on Lightning Source's site, without the designer even having to log in. However, there's always plenty of people looking for work, we have several designers on our publishers list, feel free to join and post the request.

Q) How hard is it to correct errors once a book is published?

A) One of the greatest advantage of Print-On-Demand that I really don't play up that much on either the website or in my book is the ability to make changes on the fly. For example, you know how hard it is to produce a book with zero typos, nearly impossible, but with POD you can keep track of the minor glitches that readers report, then simply send the printer a new PDF. In the case of Lightning Source, who I use and recommend in the book, replacing the whole interior is only a $40 charge, though you do risk distribution interruptions. If anything, it's probably made me a little sloppier than I used to be, knowing that I can publish a book without worrying about getting stuck with a few thousand copies if there's some really embarrassing gaffes.

Q) I've been negotiating with a POD printer and they have a formula for pricing the book. Is that normal?

A) Publishers set their own prices, whatever the technology used. One of the most successful publishers I know using POD has at least one book priced at less than $10, and I wish I had their sales. We price our business books at $14.95, which is competitive for the genre, page counts in the 170-180 range, and with Lightning Source on a short discount, we earn over half the cover price on every book we sell. About two thirds of our distribution sales come through orders placed through Ingram. If your marketing creates demand for your books, people are happy to order them and bookstores are happy to oblige. We aren't selling tens of thousands of books yet but we are selling thousands, and we've only had 9 returns this year. Since we opted for "return to publisher" rather than "return and destroy", these books were returned to us for $2 each, and they arrived in perfect (saleable) condition. Quite a difference between Lightning Source POD and the old offset/distribution publishing model.

Q) How do returns effect you publishing business?

A) Returns for us have been running well under 1%, I haven't done our numbers for the year yet, but we probably sold on the order of 4,000 Lightning Source POD books through their distribution. Since we also sell by direct mail order, we pay the $2 each to get them back, and the "new" condition of the returns makes me suspect they are actually from Ingram hiccups rather than actual store returns. The caveat is the discounts on our books are now either 30% or 25%, so no store on earth (with the exception of Amazon) is ever going to order them for stock. If your discount was 55% and you accepted returns, plus had the marketing initiative to get the books into stores, there's a good chance you'd end up seeing the average return rate in the industry, anywhere from 20% to 30% this year if I recall. I haven't seen accepting returns have any effect on either ordering or Amazon stocking, even before we lowered our discounts, but we were never at the full trade discount.

A side note on availability, our two most popular titles are now on 1-3 week shipping at Amazon (they slipped from 10-13 days a couple days before Christmas). The three explanations I can think of are:

1) Amazon still doesn't have the predictive ordering figured out (low probablility)

2) Amazon is capping reorders of all Lightning Source books at some relatively low quantity that ensures popular books will get killed on availability during periods of heavy demand.

3) Lightning Source just can't meet the holiday demand.

I'd guess it's a combination of 2 and 3 because it seems to me it's taking Lightning Source several days longer than usual to fill Ingram stocking orders. It happens at certain times every year. Fortunately, our business model isn't built on holiday sales, but it's never fun to have systems fail to meet demand. On the bright side, the e-book versons are picking up some of the slack on Amazon.

Q) I've heard that Lightning Source books often "go missing." Are they more prone to problems than other printers and publishers?

A) The problem with Lightning Source and Amazon is a systemic problem in the book industry, and I know from personal experience that it's not dependent on the number of titles a publisher has in print. My interpretation of why things go wrong (and I've spent a lot of time looking into this) is that the major players in the industry (Ingram, Amazon, LSI, Barnes&Noble, Borders) count on the integration of their computer systems to deal with the huge number of titles involved, and when human error or system changes introduce a problem with a subset of titles, it's very difficult for them to track down where the problem lays and fix it. Amazon has somewhere over 2 million titles in their database, they aren't going to drop everything to worry about the status of a handful, not for LSI, not for Booksurge, not for anybody.

For example, I author a book for McGraw-Hill, the world's largest trade publisher. The particular title sells a good 50,000 copies per edition, so it's not something you'd expect to fall between the cracks. However, that's exactly what happened when somebody at the publisher pre-announced the availability of the 4th edition by a full year. The online systems all picked it up, presenting shoppers with the decision, "do I buy this currently available edition, or do I wait a couple weeks and buy the new edition?" The major chains let their stock run out, Ingram put in an order for 500 or so copies of the new edition and stopped stocking the old edition, total mess. I informed McGraw-Hill of the problem immediately, and they proceeded to make it worse, pushing the release date out a couple months at a time, until they finally figured out they needed to cancel the ISBN. Immediately after doing so, they put reserved a new ISBN with a new premature release date, all this before I even began working on the 4th edition. Over the course of the year, the problem was never solved at Ingram or Amazon.UK, and only partially solved at Barnes&Noble, the biggest account for the book, where it was restocked and then allowed to lapse again with the new ISBN release. To the best of my knowledge, McGraw-Hill would have liked to see the book continue to sell, but with all of their market presence and clout, they were unable to work out the right formula for doing so.