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POD is NOT Vanity!
By Elaine Hopper
Many times I've wanted to scream and shout that POD (Print on Demand) is a
printing process, not the classification of book. I want to tell everyone that
POD is not inherently evil or anything to be shunned, that it has received a
very bad, very undeserved rap.
POD is merely a method of printing a paperback book. It is exactly as it sounds.
It is a printing process in which books are printed on demand, or in simpler
words, when ordered, one or two or a few copies at a time.
I just read an article in which a vanity published author kept calling his
experience with one of the vanity presses, "my POD adventure" and
"the POD concept." The misnomer makes me boil! No wonder readers get
the wrong impression when some of the vanity press authors refer to their
publishers as "POD." Is it that they don't know better? Or is it that
they don't like the terms "self-published" or "vanity" (no
editing and usually no distribution provided by the publisher) and try to
circumvent terms they consider unflattering by using "POD" and ended
up tarnishing the name unfairly?
Print On Demand is modern, cutting-edge technology. Before POD, all books were
printed using mass market technology as it was not cost effective to set up
printers to print only one to a few copies of a books at a time.
Publishers that use mass market printing methods lay out large sums of money per
large print runs of books. When these books don't sell in the time frame
allotted by the bookseller, they are stripped of their covers and returned to
the publisher for refund. The publishers cannot sell mutilated books, and thus
demolish them. What a waste! And definitely out of the price range of many new,
small presses. The POD method eliminates such waste as books are only printed
upon customer demand. It also puts the price in range for smaller presses
without a fat wallet (yet) to compete in the world of print books.
I can only presume that as many vanity publishers use this method of printing
their wares, the term POD seems to be becoming a colloquialism, like Xerox® is
to all copies made on copy machines, Band-Aid® is to all small plastic adhesive
bandages, and Jell-O® is to all flavored gelatin.
For this reason, I prefer to use the term "Trade Paperback."
Unfortunately, most people, booksellers in particular, understand that
"trade paperback" is the same technology as "POD."
One of my publishers publishes in both trade paperback and mass market. Another
one of my publishers is preparing to publish the same novels in mass market
paperback they once published in trade paperback. The novels are the same, only
the method of printing has changed.
Someday, POD will no longer be the black sheep of the printing world. Our
society will learn that POD is economical and thus desirable.
Elaine Hopper lives in sunny South Florida with her husband and six children,
surrounded by palm trees, cats, ducks, and alligators.
By day, Elaine works for a charity that serves the poor of the Caribbean and
Latin America. By night, she dons her writer's hat to write book reviews, author
interviews, writing and promotional articles, and pen romance novels.
Don't miss her charming romantic comedy NEXT TO FOREVER available at New
Concepts Publishing at www.newconceptspublishing.com/nexttoforever.htm
Reviewers are saying it's laugh out loud funny.
Elaine invites you to read a free excerpt of NEXT TO FOREVER and all her
published novels at: http://www.elainehopper.com.
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