Everything You Wanted to Know About POD - Print on Demand Services

POD stands for Print on Demand publishing, and it is the newest, and some say the most important, evolution in book printing since the printing press. For years, printing a book required a heavy investment of capital because it just didn't make sense to print only a few books. In the traditional print book industry today, a small run of books would be nothing smaller than 1,000 copies of a book. This is a substantial outlay of money that has to be paid in advance on the hopes all of the books will sell. Over the years, this led to a cornering of the market by large publishing houses that could foot the bill for big publishing runs and who tended to promote only "sure things," those authors that they knew well sell a lot of books.

Inevitably, a lot of talented writers fell through the cracks. No one wanted to take a chance on them, and they couldn't afford to pay a vanity press tens of thousands of dollars to print a run of their book. After all, if it didn't sell, they would be stuck with hundreds of books that hadn't been sold.

Print on Demand changed all that. Now, with new technology and printing methods, an author can go to one of dozens of reputable on-demand publishers and have their book published in whatever quantities he needs. This may mean he wants just a few hundred at first to see if he can generate interest. If it goes well, he can order as many additional printings as he wants to at any time. POD means getting the number of books you want, when you want them and not a moment sooner.

With online bookstores on the rise, POD will become more and more popular because anyone anywhere can see the author's title and order the book. At that point, the book will either be shipped from the distribution center, or a new copy of the book will be printed and shipped.

With Print on Demand, you have more control over your book and your life. You have input into the design and printing of your book, how the final book binding and cover will look and will have the final say before it is produced. None of these are things you will have control over when you work with a traditional publishing house.