MADE-TO-MEASURE PUBLISHING: print-on-demand and custom opportunities

Print-on-demand: introduction

• Although true single-copy print-on-demand (POD) is still in its infancy, it is widely expected to become significant and, ultimately, has the potential to change the book publishing supply chain.
• There has not been one common approach to POD by publishers, although it has generally received more support from academic and professional publishers.
• A convergence of factors has propelled POD into the limelight, including digital printing technology, the rise of the internet and the advent of new POD intermediaries.

Print-on-demand players

• Many different players offer POD services, such as printers, virtual distributors, wholesalers, self-publishing start-ups and retailers.

Benefits and issues for publishers

• POD can bring manifold benefits to book publishers in terms of cash savings and increased flexibility. These include printing to order, never having to put a book out-of-print and preventing cash being tied up in stock.
• The principal POD issues confronting publishers are reproduction quality, cost and the initial investment needed to set up a POD facility.

Custom publishing: overview

• Custom publishing is the assembling of existing content assets in new combinations to form a product according to the requirements of a specific customer.
• To date custom publishing has been largely the domain of educational publishers, due to concerns about royalty losses from large-scale photocopying, and the ability to draw on sales reps? relationships with academics to create bespoke textbooks, which contain a mix of content from the publisher, lecturer and third parties.

A changing landscape

• In recent years intermediaries including subscription agents, print-on-demand service providers and start-ups have begun to offer custom publishing facilities.
• The type of content used in custom environments is expanding beyond education to include travel, instructional, reference and religious material.
• Businesses such as conference organisations, whose core activity lies outside publishing but who have valuable content, are also entering the frame.

The e-volution of custom publishing

• XML is increasingly used as the storage format for digital content, which allows smaller granules of content to be available for customisation.
• The internet has accelerated the entire custom publishing process, principally permissions clearing and receiving content for customisation.
• The use of the web to interface with content databases has empowered consumers to customise content. The web is also used as a marketing tool to drive custom sales.

Custom e-books

• E-books are favoured by university disciplines and professions which place importance on currency of information. The most popular solutions are Microsoft and Adobe, though there is no standard pricing policy.
• Faster turnaround times, rich media, assessment features and search facilities are the key value-adds.

The future

• POD is set to become increasingly important in the book publishing world. POD has a role to play within a general digital publishing strategy, especially related to the creation of a ?virtual warehouse? of titles.
• POD is not expected to replace offset printing entirely, but will remain a strong complementary printing technique for publishers.
• POD has the potential to enable book publishers to print their books local to the customer, thereby saving on warehousing and shipping costs.
• The emergence of service providers may allow smaller publishers to exploit custom publishing opportunities, while simplification of the end-user process is important.
• Blended products combining print and electronic media are expected to prevail for some years