{"id":3514,"date":"2024-05-20T06:15:10","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T06:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/?p=3514"},"modified":"2024-05-22T04:04:26","modified_gmt":"2024-05-22T04:04:26","slug":"pod-and-the-pandemic-how-are-publishers-using-print-on-demand-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/articles\/2024\/05\/20\/3514\/pod-and-the-pandemic-how-are-publishers-using-print-on-demand-now\/","title":{"rendered":"POD and the pandemic: How are publishers using print on demand now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many publishers around the world, the supply-chain chaos of the pandemic drove a move to print on demand (POD).<\/em>\u00a0Books+Publishing\u00a0asks what role POD plays for publishers and booksellers now.<\/em><\/p>\n

The coming-of-age of POD has been declared more than once. Improvements in the quality of the finished books have met praise (of the \u2018I can\u2019t believe it\u2019s not butter!\u2019 kind), as well as speculation that these advances meant it was finally POD\u2019s moment. Ingram\u2019s 2011 entry into the local market recognised and drove demand. But the pandemic brought POD into focus in a different way.<\/p>\n

As the UK retail sector all but shut down, publisher activity in uploading lists for POD grew \u2018exponentially\u2019, according to Debbie Lee who was at that time a senior manager at Ingram Lightning Source (LS) and is now an independent publishing consultant. This was both so publishers could take advantage of global retail markets that were still \u2018functional\u2019, and so they could make their titles more immediately accessible in other parts of the world\u2014the US and Australia\u2014via POD, rather than shipping stock, when the cost of international freight to and from Australia was so exorbitant it was \u2018repelling business\u2019, as Lee then put it.<\/p>\n

Locally, Lee described \u2018a lot of frenetic activity\u2019 in the early days of 2020. \u2018I think publishers are really turning their attention to driving business in the downturn, and setting eyes on POD as the way out of the mess,\u2019 she told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/i>. \u2018At the same time, this is laying foundations for a different model and way of doing business in the long term.\u2019<\/p>\n

As the dust settles and we enter mid-2024, lead times at local printers might have eased, but war is still affecting shipping in Europe and the Middle East. What role does POD play now?<\/p>\n

\u2018An important part of the mix\u2019<\/strong>
\n\u2018I think we should clarify what we mean by \u201cPOD\u201d,\u2019 said A&U publisher Elizabeth Weiss when sharing the publisher\u2019s approach. \u2018Sometimes it\u2019s used to mean \u201cshort-run digital printing\u201d (SRDP), meaning print runs [of approximately] 50 to 600 copies printed digitally, used to keep a book in print when a slowing rate of sales means a regular offset print run can no longer be justified.\u2019 POD is also used to refer to single-copy printing in response to a customer order.<\/p>\n

A&U has been using SRDP since the early 2000s, and has had a single-copy POD program since 2009. When the pandemic hit in 2020, A&U continued with both forms of printing. \u2018SRDP enabled us to respond flexibly to the volatility in the market over the pandemic period. Now the lockdowns are over, we are continuing to use short-run printing to manage our stock holdings efficiently and respond to the market in a timely way,\u2019 said Weiss, who added that while A&U is doing fewer short-run print jobs than at the height of the pandemic, \u2018it remains an important part of the mix, and it will continue to be important\u2019.<\/p>\n

As for single-copy POD, Weiss noted that the pandemic prompted little change in A&U\u2019s approach. \u2018We only put titles into single-copy POD when we can no longer justify a short digital run, and this hasn\u2019t changed in the years we have had a POD program,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Over the years, we have found that market demand for POD titles has fallen a little,\u2019 Weiss told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/i>. \u2018The long tail hasn\u2019t lived up to the hopes of the early days of the internet: we are all spoiled for choice in books (ebooks, audiobooks), movies, music, media and podcasts, and the number of hours in the day hasn\u2019t increased.\u2019 However, she said, \u2018there is certainly still demand for many backlist titles years after they were first published, and we think it\u2019s important to keep them in print as long as we possibly can\u2019.<\/p>\n

While Lee said the pandemic meant \u2018publishers of all shapes and sizes, locally and globally, were able to turn their attention to [single-order] POD and get their titles, both backlist and new release, into the system without the everyday \u201cdistractions\u201d of office life\u2019, at Simon & Schuster (S&S), it was the opposite\u2014at least for a time.<\/p>\n

\u2018POD was in its infancy for S&S, and with Griffin [Press] prior to Covid, but the challenges of the supply chain over the next few years (including Griffin\u00a0cancelling their POD program<\/a>) actually paused the process,\u2019 S&S\u2019s head of supply chain Penny Evershed told\u00a0Books+Publishing<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Evershed went on to explain that S&S reviewed its order-to-order program monthly and that delays in getting order-to-order titles to Australia during Covid caused lost sales and unnecessary stock holding in the warehouse. \u2018Once the dust settled, speed to market became a priority, and POD increased the number of titles we could make available,\u2019 Evershed said. So, after Griffin POD closed, S&S transitioned to Ingram, giving it access to the publisher\u2019s US Ingram POD catalogue. In late 2023, S&S had 4000 titles available via its POD program and was in the process of setting up an agreement with S&S UK and Ingram, which would expand this significantly.<\/p>\n

Now, \u2018we balance our order-to-order program using air, sea and POD where appropriate, but are always tweaking the list and processes to give the broadest availability in the fastest way,\u2019 said Evershed. \u2018If demand increases, warranting the need for ongoing stock on hand, then we will update the supply method.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018POD, which is a new strategy for S&S, is about refining availability, reintroducing title availability and supplying the customer as quickly as possible.\u2019<\/p>\n

To read the rest of the article, visit <\/a><\/em> and subscribe<\/a> to <\/em>Books+Publishing<\/a>,\u00a0Australia\u2019s number-one source of news about the book industry, keeping readers up to date with the latest book industry news, events, features, interviews, opinion, personnel changes, job advertisements and classifieds. <\/em>Books+Publishing is also the only source of pre-publication reviews of Australian and New Zealand books, publishing an average of 30 pre-publication reviews per month.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many publishers around the world, the supply-chain chaos of the pandemic drove a move to print on demand (POD).\u00a0Books+Publishing\u00a0asks what role POD plays for publishers and booksellers now. The coming-of-age of POD has been declared more than once. Improvements in the quality of the finished books have met praise (of the \u2018I can\u2019t believe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-features","8":"category-newsletter"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3514"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3603,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3514\/revisions\/3603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booksandpublishing.com.au\/independentpublishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}