 ePublishing
and Print on Demand Services
By Ralph Budelman
Stylus Systems makes information available on this site to encourage
visitors to consider our services. We are available to provide technical
services to support epublishing. We can create epublishing software products,
create ebookstores, and provide a variety of other web solutions. Please
read the article and feel free to contact us.
Introduction
I prefer to read on my monitor but print is still the way most of the
world reads. Fortunately print is not being left behind in the digital
age. Print on-Demand is an upgrade on old technology that has lots of
benefits. Print on-demand is simply printing from a digital file a book
or magazine only when it is needed and in the quantity needed.
Print on-Demand is making low volume, low risk, low cost publishing feasible.
For the reader it is opening the door to publications like out of print
books, industry-focused information and socially beneficial papers that
would not otherwise get printed.
For the publisher print on-demand is opening up new opportunities for
traditional publishers to expand their markets and for entrepreneurs to
enter publishing in a low cost low risk way.
Traditional print is still viable for many books, newspapers and magazines
but it does face economic barriers. For example, the cost of printing
100 books is very high because of what is involved in setting up the press.
Each book then becomes very expensive. To bring the cost per book down,
about 3000 books should be printed.
Once 3000 books are printed they need to be placed in storage and then
distributed to resellers. This process requires a large investment and
also ties up money that is returned only as the books sell. From this
illustration you can see that only books with a good chance of selling
large volumes are considered for publishing.
But consider a 30 page imaginary book called Building Houses Using Earthen
Bricks. The market for this book is small and it is estimated that 200
books may sell over the next three years. The cost of traditional publishing
would not make it economically feasible to print this book. But with Print
on Demand it becomes feasible to publish this book. Let me explain.
Print on Demand is exactly that. When a book is needed it is printed
or copied on demand. What makes this possible is the storage of the book
in digital format and copy machine or printer that can economically print
1- 1000 books.
With a Rizo or laser printer the cost to print one medium of a large
200 page book is high but for smaller books (like our 30 page example)
, magazines and booklets it is more feasible. New technologies are bringing
this cost down. (See The Perfect Book Machine article below)
Another advantage is that the book can be improved continuously. A traditional
book is printed once with revisions coming often years later. With print
on demand a publication can be quickly launched and improved and updated.
This ability to update as needed is important especially when publishing
technology books. In this fast changing world these and many other books
can become obsolete in 6 months.
This ability to quickly and inexpensively launch a book allows for easy
market testing thus taking much of the risk out of publishing. A new book
can be marketed and if there is no demand for it, it can be abandoned
without the huge cost that is involved in printing thousands of books.
Soon lots of new publications will be available.
I recently saw an American University website that had many of their
old out of print books and research papers coming back to life as print
on demand books.
Perhaps one day a very small bookstore in Bangalore India will have a
printer and computer that will allow print on demand. A customer will
walk in and request a book on earthen bricks. The store employee will
go to the computer and request Building Houses Using Earthen Bricks. The
employee hits print and out comes the book. A happy customer might buy
this book and also have access to vast number of books from around the
globe.
If you are interested in epublishing or print on demand and needs the
services of a web technology company then please contact Stylus Systems.
We are a web technology company located in Bangalore India with expertise
in technologies to facilitate epublishing. We can
- Build a Commerce Website that will sell your books
- Create and online catalog of ebooks
- Install a system for protecting copyrights
- Develop a means for downloading books
- Outsource the formatting of paper books to PDF format
- Integrate third party publish solutions into a website.
The Following are links to Print on Demand Sites:
Print on Demand Magazine
This magazine is both online and in print.
The
Perfect Book Machine
By John Mcloskey July 2001 Issue.
This is a very interesting article in Business 2.0 It is about a machine
similar to a copy machine that can print cut and bind to create a finished
book. The concept of being able to print one book at a time or Print-on-Demand
is glorified in this quote from the article.
But Marsh has far bigger things in mind. He calculates that his machines,
manufactured on a large scale, could be sold for about $30,000 apiece.
At that price, they could be distributed widely enough to put everyone
on the planet within a few miles and a few dollars of every book ever
written. "I see this going into places like India or Brazil where
you have real distribution needs," he says.
That's a vision shared by Michael Smolens, the CEO of a company called
3 Billion Books. Smolens aims to be a sort of bibliophilic Ray Kroc, using
the Internet to distribute the entire body of human literature through
print-on-demand stations around the globe. "Can you imagine how much
better the world would be?" he asks. "How more intelligent people
would be?" The PerfectBook machine also has more prosaic and immediate
applications-printing manuals and corporate documents, for example. Marsh
hopes to put it into broad use quickly by licensing it to corporate print
shops.
Ipublish
They are a part of AOL Time Warner
Xlibris
At Xlibris, we give you everything you need to become your own publisher.
We work with you to create your book, then print copies on-demand for
your readers. You keep all rights to your work. We also offer services
that give you all the control you need over your book.
At Xlibris, we give you everything you need to become your own publisher.
We work with you to create your book, then print copies on-demand for
your readers. You keep all rights to your work. We also offer services
that give you all the control you need over your book.
Wire
E-Book publisher Rosettasbooks
will launch early next year- but it won't have a single new title. Instead,
CEO Arthur Klebanoff, owner of Scott Meredith Literary Agency is gambling
on the tried and trusted backlust to lure readers to the e-book format.
And he's keeping them below those of trade paperbacks.
Print on Demand
This article presents many of the problems associated with Print on Demand.
Digitz
The company offers up to 100 books in less than 48 hours or it is Free.
They are Print on Demand publisher
On-Demand Press
We can take your raw manuscript, drop-ship finished books within a month,
and handle each and every editorial, design and production step along
the way. And we can do it all online.
1stBooks
1stBooks Library can publish your manuscript as a paperback, hardcover,
or electronic book and make it available through more than 25,000 bookstores
worldwide!
|
