POD Books

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I have always had my books published by POD publishers and they have been on sale online not through bookstores my latest book is no exception. Do readers consider buying books on the Web? Are you reluctant to use credit cards online? Do you equate POD publishers with vanity publishers?

― Derek Smith, Monday, 13 March 2006 03:39 (nineteen years ago)

yes yes yes yes and yes?

p.s. what is a POD?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 13 March 2006 03:43 (nineteen years ago)

oh. print on demand.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 13 March 2006 03:43 (nineteen years ago)

Do readers consider buying books on the Web?

Last I checked, Amazon was still in business.

Are you reluctant to use credit cards online?

Last I checked, Amazon was still in business.

Do you equate POD publishers with vanity publishers?

Well, yes, of course, unless there is some sort of editorial oversight. I don't necessarily have a problem with vantiy publication, though, although I prefer the vanity publishers who pay to get a hundred copies of their book made and then give it to all their friends for free. But not everyone can afford that.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 13 March 2006 03:44 (nineteen years ago)

Print on Demand is good for things where you know the audience is small, and you know the audience personally. The history of your club, a book of family recipes, that kind of thing.
I could also maybe see it being used to create buzz - distributing nicely printed free copies of a book to create interest and get a contract for your next book. Expensive though, so choose your audience carefully.
I suppose it's theoretically possible that someone could write a books that's so wildly experimental and innovative that it can't find a publisher, but I'd really like it. I think it's unlikely these days, given the sheer volume of books being printed and the massive number of publishers out there. So I usually think POD = shite.

― Ray (Ray), Monday, 13 March 2006 11:44 (nineteen years ago)

These responses are what I expected and I have answered some of them privately.
The World does not revolve around Amazon.
There are other secure bookstore sites.
There are other ways of paying on the Net.
POD is a print technology that provides books faster and cheaper for the reader. It also allows slighlty larger royalty payments to authors. It is used by many vanity piublishers.

― Derek Smith, Saturday, 25 March 2006 00:59 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure what your point is, but those are all true, except for the "cheaper for the reader" -- it's much cheaper for the reader (and better quality too) for books to be printed in bulk. I don't know about the royalty payment situation -- if you're doing POD you shouldn't be in it for royalties. If your royalties are goign to be significant enough to matter, you should just print a run of howevermany and have a cheaper-per-unit and better looking book.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 25 March 2006 03:57 (nineteen years ago)

are pod books like pod people?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Saturday, 25 March 2006 04:05 (nineteen years ago)

I have a book that I self-publish through a POD web site. There are many difficulties with connecting readers to POD books.

The first is obvious enough: publicity. If no one has heard of your book, they won't buy it because (to them) it doesn't exist.

The next (and quite similar) problem I will call 'opacity'. Even if the potential reader finds out your book exists, they can find out very little more than that. Without an independent source of reviews or the chance to browse the contents, your POD book is a pig in a poke.

The best successes for POD and self-published authors tend to be books that dovetail with their other self-employment activities. If you teach classes, lecture, or speak publically, then you can do the equivalent of a band selling CDs at its gigs. Also good are niche books that contain valuable hard information for a market that is too small for a regular publisher to bother about.

Ocassionally, you can talk the local newspaper into reviewing your book. But mostly, you're going to have to work your fanny off to publicize your book and even then expect meager results. Especially for novels. The market is glutted with titles and the number of readers is shrinking. It's just the way it is.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 25 March 2006 17:03 (nineteen years ago)

I think homemade chapbooks are the way to go. Especially if you tend to write 9-page occult fairytales about Hitler's ghost. Or mummies.

― scott seward (scott seward), Saturday, 25 March 2006 23:25 (nineteen years ago)

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