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Re: Electronic OA plus print on demand model for books

Ahmed is absolutely right. And it used to be, ten years ago, that pricing for offset printing was such that one couldn't sensibly resort to offset unless the print run was at least 500 copies or more. But, in competition with digital printers, offset printers began to lower their prices, so that beginning around 2000 one could print just 300-400 copies offset (and get the higher quality that comes with it) at a cost that was competitive with digital printing. But it remains true that anywhere below, say, 200 copies digital printing is more cost-effective. Most of our paperback print runs start with 200 copies and thus are all printed digitally. The life cycle of a typical monograph for us at Penn State these days is: initial 300-400 cloth run offset (with sewn binding); initial paperback printing of 200 copies SRDP (short-run digital printing); when annual sales fall below 100, then pure POD (one copy at a time).

Sandy Thatcher


At 11:29 PM -0400 6/10/10, Ahmed Hindawi wrote:
Joe, this is not actually true. Offset printing has a high
initial/fixed cost for a print run and a lower marginal cost per
copy. POD has (almost) zero initial/fixed cost and high marginal
cost per copy. At smaller number of copies, the cost per copy of
POD is much smaller than regular offset printing. At larger
number o copes, the cost per copy of POD becomes higher than the
regular offset printing.

The number of copies at which POD stop being more cost effective than offset printing depends on a number of parameters (including whether the printing is in color or not), but it used to be in the area of a couple of hundreds of copies. More recently, we have started using a vendor who is giving us prices that make POD less costly for B&W books for any print runs up to 1000-1500 copies. I was very impressed. At 200 to 500 copies, the difference in cost is very substantial.

Ahmed Hindawi

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 4:05 AM, Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

 I am afraid Heather is misinformed about the economics of
 print on demand. The unit cost for POD is significantly
 higher than for books printed on offset equipment. The
 savings for POD, when they exist, come about from the absence
 of a need to manage inventory. If you can sell only one or
 two copies, POD is more efficient. If you can sell 1,000 (or
 100,000, for that matter), start the presses.

 As for the idea that ebooks will represent a market that is
 substantially additive to the print market, well, what was
 that line from Hemingway? 'Wouldn't it be nice to think so?'

 Joe Esposito

 On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 2:22 PM, Heather Morrison
 <hgmorris@sfu.ca> wrote:

 Joe Esposito wrote:

 Book professionals are now forecasting that in five years,
 25% of the book market will be electronic. How can anyone
 expect to sell print under these circumstances?

 Comment:

 Assuming that this forecast is correct - that 25% of the
 book market will indeed be electronic in five years, does
 this not mean that 75% of the book market will be print?
 If sales of e-book editions take off, this does not
 necessarily mean a corresponding decrease in print - the 75%
 could be 75% of a larger market.

 Within the next few years, it should be possible to greater
 lower the cost of print books through print-on-demand. It
 makes sense to me that people would make use of a book
 espresso machine at their university library or bookstore,
 and pay a modest fee for the book production and
 print-on-demand rights, as the high cost of attempting to
 distribute limited edition academic books on a worldwide
 basis are thereby eliminate, as are all sales and most
 marketing costs.

 Another possible model is a completely free internet-based
 edition, with revenue generated by value-add electronic
 versions, i.e. the web browser version is free, but there is
 a modest fee for the Kindle version.

 Heather Morrison, MLIS
 The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics