A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Delving into the Details of POD

 

It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. 

This week we look at the print on demand option for book printing. Authors generally think that understand POD (after all, it is a simple concept of just-in-time printing, right?), but they often do not. Authors may misinterpret/misunderstand POD in the nature, structure, and realizations of POD.

Nature

Print-on-Demand is an approach to publishing books as the demand (sales) for them are generated. Digital printing has allowed for the capacity to generate small numbers of books, even individual copies and has facilitated publishing/printing to join the growing numbers of businesses that rely on just-in-time inventory, saving the massive costs of warehousing long-term inventory.

Structure

The structure of POD is pretty simple: as a sale comes in to the distributor, the distributor requests a book copy from the printer or the publisher. The printer generates the book; the publisher is charged the cost of the book, and the distributor collects the sales price from the purchaser, passing along the revenue minus a % (typically, 40%-55%) for the distribution/seller fee. Generally, of that fee, 40% goes to the retail or online store and 15% to the distributor/wholesaler. 

Realizations

There are at least three typical misunderstandings about POD, which can cause disappointment. These include print runs, inventory, and returns.

Print runs

POD books are printed individually or in print runs. Print runs can range from two books to thousands. A print run refers to all books printed at the same time. What authors fail to realize in many cases is that the color in digital printing will vary from print run (batch of books printed together at one time) to print run. The tone and brightness of individual colors may vary so that a book printed in 2022 in one print run may look slightly different from a book printed in 2023 in another print run.

Inventory

Authors often think that there is no inventory involved with print runs, but there is. Typically, bookstores that stock MSI Press books will order at least one copy when a new book comes out. If there appears to be an interest among the bookseller’s clientele, i.e. they get a few dozen orders the first month (we like to see about 100 orders the first month on a new book), they will generally order a few dozen copies to have in inventory going forward. Think about it – it would be an ineffective model of selling to wait until someone comes along and orders the book to ask that customer to wait until the book is printed, shipped to the seller, and then re-shipped to the purchaser. Customers expect orders to be shipped out nearly same day, not to have to wait for a book to be printed. It would be like ordering a fan or chair through an online store and being told to wait until the item is constructed, obtained by the store, and then shipped. That model would not work! So, yes, there is inventory.

In POD, inventory is limited, and how much inventory depends on the turnover on any given book over time. If a book is selling 30 copies a day, then inventory will be much larger; it a book is selling 3 copies a month, inventory will be much lower. It is not cost-effective for any business to have inventory just lying around unsold and unselling.

The bottom line, though, is that there will be inventory. This can be confusing for authors (not so for publishers and distributors) when it comes to payment of royalties. If a book is sold as part of inventory acquisition to a bookseller, that is the date in which the distributor reports the sale to the publisher and the date on which the royalties are added to the author’s account with the publisher. If a bookseller acquires 30 books and sells 20 right away and 10 over the next year or more, an author might learn that a book had sold subsequent to receipt of a royalty check and therefore expect to see that sale in the next check when, in reality, that royalty was already paid (at the time of the sale to the bookseller – whenever the bookseller sells the book has nothing to do with royalties since royalties have already been paid). 

Returns

Authors are sometimes surprised to learn that a POD book would have returns, but, given that booksellers “stock up” (i.e. have inventory), it is reasonable that some of them would “overstock.” In time, typically 6 months or a year, that overstocking (inventory) gets returned to the distributor, who has to reimburse the bookseller. The distributor then returns the book to the publisher, and the publisher has to reimburse the distributor as well as pay the shipping and handling fees, a serious revenue loss for most publishers. In some cases, bookstore returns have forced small publishers out of business.

Excess Inventory

In some cases of returns, publishers can sell the “boomeranging” copies and recover some of the invested expense. (They cannot usually recover the full amount because they have to eat the shipping costs and generally have to sell the book as a used book, which carries a lower retail price.)

In other cases of returns, publishers cannot sell all or even close to all of the “boomeranging” copies and never recover their loss, while still needing to warehouse the excess copies of the book. 

Bottom line: There is a little more to POD ramifications than most authors realize.

See more Publisher Conversations with authors HERE.

 Learn more about publishing from an acquisitions editor -- how to get your book proposal accepted, why proposals are turned down/accepted, and how to find the right publisher for your book. On special sale for $5 while inventory lasts at MSI Press webstore.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic that you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 18 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.

                             

Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter

Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram. 

Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?

Check out information on how to submit a proposal.

Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book
 in exchange for reviewing a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book?
Contact editor@msipress.com.

Want an author-signed copy of this book?
Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25)
and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.

Want to communicate with one of our authors?
You can!
Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.