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Author Jeff DeRego’s case against print on demand
July 3, 2007 | 3:05 am
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By David Rothman
Lack of big-time review exposure. Outrageous production costs compared to usual printing. Tiny sales. A stigma that could torpedo a would-be professional writer’s career. Those are the among the arguments that author Jeff DeRego makes against print on demand. Check out the audio interview that Paula Berinstein of The Writing Show did with him.
Question: So, for an author, how does print-on-demand compare with with e-book-only publication? Or what about the model of putting the book online for free noncommercial use, via a Creative Commons license, and relying on that to stir up interest in a POD edition? Any interesting success stories?
More on the stigma issue: In a different vein, I’d love to hear from Claire Israel of S&S or other TeleBlog readers associated with large publishing companies—for views on the stigma issue. My belief is that the stigma factor exists, in part justifiably because of all the dreck out there. That seemed to be the consensus on some publishing-related lists when the issue came up.
Caveat: I see a place for print on demand, but, in most cases, only for writers with low expectations for the books involved. While Robert Nagle and I might perp a “Best of TeleRead” POD book, I, for one, won’t expect a best-seller—not when the posts were link-heavy, intended for online use rather than print. Robert probably has more faith in POD than I do, and in the interest of balance, I’d welcome his rebuttal to what Jeff D. says.
The Future: Jeff DeRego sees writers getting together to publish themselves, and he says that he hopes they hire a thousand and one editors. Amen! Given the rotten economics, POD authors typically just don’t have money for editors.
Related: Aborted Print on Demand, by publishing consultant Michael Cairns in the PersonaNonData blog. This is a different kind of POD from the one for aspiring authors. Cairnes is talking about a POD machine plunked down at the New York Public Library—for the printing of existing works. He was unhappy with the size of the machine, and when he visited on a Saturday, he found it unattended. (Via Peter Brantley.)
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Comments:
I’d love to comment, but I actually don’t understand the question. Are we discussing POD by a publishing house, or self publishing?
Claire
Many thanks, Claire. Sorry if I wasn’t clearer. I meant a mix of self-publishing and POD–say, a Lulu scenario, where you’d list yourself as a publisher (or let the book go out in Lulu’s name, which means squat, since it isn’t a traditional publisher). Feel free to fill in other variables or ask other questions about my question. My own hunch is that POD through a traditional publishing house wouldn’t hurt the book at all. That would be just smart business on the part of the house to keep low-demand titles available.
David
My argument in favor of POD has always been timeline. First time authors (and even established ones) can’t afford to wait several years trying to find agents and persuading a company to publish them.
I understand there are issues with releasing something too early or in unpolished form or something which is unmarketable. But the web (and mobipocket and POD) offers instant gratification to authors–surely that is better for an author’s reputation than leaving a manuscript in a drawer somewhere.
But Robert, as I see it, the idea should be instant gratification for READERS, not WRITERS. That’s what editors are for, and you’ve said about as much. As I suspect Claire will say, POD books may actually hurt writers’ reps among mainstream publishers. Sometimes the drawer is the best choice. I’m not saying don’t do POD. But if you do it, try to apply traditional standards of quality, and if you can’t, then say so. As I see it, any Best of TeleRead would have to be marketed as just a more convenient way to read the blog—not as a truly polished book. We don’t have editorial resources for that. Of course, the big issue is the TeleBlog’s strong reliance on external links, which come and go. Thanks. It’s great to have different perspectives in this debate, and, heck, I would be curious to see how a Best project would fare, so kudos to you for raising the idea. David
(For other readers: “Best of TeleRead” is an idea David and I have been bandying about: a collection of the more interesting posts from the weblog over the last few years into an ebook– a noncommercial one, as I see it). That’s not really the kind of book I was talking about.
I always remember the case of Felipe Alfau’s Chromos, which lay in the drawer for 42 years after it was written, published only because an editor stumbled upon an out-of-print book of Alfau 50 years after it was published. It was nominated for a National Book Award in 1990.
Of course, one could argue that Dalkey Archives is responsible for giving Alfau the reputation he has today. (They did do a nice editing job according to this interview ). But if POD’s and ebooks were around, things might have turned out differently.
POD is, however, perfect for teaching purposes. It can expand the “canon” outside the rut created by teachers assigning only books in print and the books remaining in print only because teachers assign them. Once you’ve got that circle established, the chance that some author forgotten since 1892 is going to be “rediscovered” is remote.
If students don’t want to read ebooks, you can POD the ebooks when you assign them.
This thought was prompted by various laments on a mailing list of English professors. They would like their students to read X, but X isn’t in print. They saw no way out!
Thanks for the clarification. I see POD as simply another format that the book is in, like a library edition or a large print. Words are the same, the packaging may be different.
If we are going down the road of self publishing, it really does depend on the outcome the author is trying to achieve. We all hear stories about an author who sold his grandfather’s pacemaker to print 1000 books and sell them out of the trunk of his car and then get a huge publisher and so on. I suppose it’s much like getting discovered at Schwabs (sp?) soda fountain in Hollywood in the 50′s. Rare.
As far as self vs trade, the anecdote that I have from my days working for Rocket eBook are that I had 6 trade publisher and a few hundred backlist books, and my counterpart in CA had hundreds of publishers and thousands of titles, all that were eOnly or self published. And I accounted for 98% of the revenue even though we displayed and marketed the books the same.
I think it’s really up to the author to decide what they want to live with – but eBooks sure seem a lot less expensive and an awesome test ground to see if they should be investing in the tree killing kind. Ego-wise, not as satisfying. Pocketbook wise, seems smarter.
Just my ramble.
Claire
Karen: Totally agree! POD can do a lot of good in the classroom. What’s more, I think Robert’s “Best of TeleRead” project is a great use for the technology, just so people realize this will be another way to read the blog—not a substitute for a polished, heavily edited book. – David
Extending the discussion out from POD textbooks, I think POD and ‘instant gratification’ are great tools for student writers. I see many teachers getting their classes to set up class blogs, and the interactivity is great, as well as the thrill the kids must feel being able to go online and see their words published just like famous authors, great newspapers, and world leaders.
Similarly, I imagine the kids would love to be able to POD the class projects and put their hands lovingly on the physical object of their mental work. To a 13-year old 2 years’ of waiting is an eternity. Next week is more like it.
And it seems to me that being an ‘author’ and a ‘published author’ (albeit POD or self-published) is the sort of positive feedback that not only encourages future writing careers but also future careers in reading. Readers write and writers read.
When I was a kid it was all self-published comics. Robert Crumb and his brothers made their own comics in the 1950s, and 10 years later kids were actually printing them out and trying to sell them. The prospect of being ‘published’ in the sense that many copies are made and distributed, with feedback gained, and so on, is a powerful inducement to create.
Wow–what great comments!
We have had so much feedback from Jeff’s interview that we are planning a follow-up panel discussion on the issue of self-publishing (however it’s defined) vs. traditional publishing. There may, in fact, be enough demand for several follow-up shows.
Little did I realize when I booked Jeff what a stir he’d cause.
Hi everyone, thanks for mentioning my interview with Paula B. on The Writing Show and debating Print on Demand. If you look at the averages for POD titles published (and I don’t simply mean printed), the average number of books sold is 111. The concept of “pocket sales” is a lynchpin of every POD business model out there. Pocket sales, means sold to the author and the author’s friends and family.
If you look at the “bestsellers” at places like iUniverse and even Lulu, their “bestsellers” are those books that have sales in excess of 500 units.
500 units is just about the smallest print run you can economically make at your local offset print company, the cost average for that is about $6 per book wholesale.
Lulu’s owners have described their business model as “we’d rather see 1 million authors selling 100 books each than 100 authors selling one million each.”
100 books is a sales amount so small as to be almost subatomic. And yes, I understand that Lulu is a print interface for Lightning Source and not a POD company like iUniverse or ExLibris or PublishAmerica, but a large part of their publishing business model is virtually identical, though slightly lower cost.
I will be happy to address any questions that you might have about POD or my interview.