'The Summer of POD'

Oh, to end the confusion! Print on demand is a technology—useful to quality-minded publishers, big and small, traditional or indie. Don’t associate the term simply with slapdash books from vanity presses.

The publisher of the memoirs of Scott McClellan, ex-White House press secretary, used POD to keep up with demand. And now Epicenter Press is doing the same with its new Sara Palin bio. Thanks to technical advances, POD books are harder than ever to tell apart from traditional ones. Good little small presses are embracing POD along with e-book tech.

While POD printing can cost more, there’s something else to consider if you’re a house "stuck" with a sold-out bestseller—the need to keep the book moving and in the public eye. PW Editor in Chief Sara Nelson makes a similar point and many other good ones in The Summer of POD.

Of course, I think that E will be the norm in time. But that day isn’t here yet. Until then POD has a major role to play.

Related TeleBlog items: New service could help small publishers go E and POD: ePub is key and two posts by Chris Meadows: A POD of coffee: The Espresso print-on-demand kiosk and Reviewing The Crystal Stopper—a Public Domain Reprints Book. Also check out other POD-elated posts, including those on Amazon’s POD grab.