On-demand printing opportunities and issues

The concept of Print On Demand existed as early as five or six years ago. At that time, the printing technology failed to cooperate. Therefore, it was unable to fully commercialize sales. With the development of digital technology, the concept of POD could be practiced. The sex has greatly improved, and new business opportunities have gradually appeared in the market.

The benefit of the POD service is to facilitate the end user. Whether it is to reduce costs, make it easier to operate, or take a step closer to consumption, everything is in the interests of end-users.

Digital Printing Technology

The products of the market are becoming more and more personalized, less-diversified and diversified, which helps to fully realize the advantages of the POD program and expand more business opportunities. The digital printing technology is convenient, cheap and fast to cooperate with the POD to attack the market. Digital technology drastically reduced printing costs and eliminated the minimum number of print restrictions, resulting in the commercialization of POD. The storage warehouse has always been a heavy cost burden for the printing and publishing industry. In order to achieve better economic efficiency, the POD program has changed the production mode of the product, from previously produced and then sold, to the present. Sell ​​and then made. Solve the problem of stocking in storage, but also avoid unnecessary production loss, in line with the principle of environmental protection.

AOD New Consumer Opportunities

The new business opportunity based on POD, AOD (Articles On Demand), divides the contents of the book into pieces and sells them into single chapters for sale. The reader no longer has to bring the whole book to see an article. Return home. The original AOD was created for categorizing information related to science, technology, law, and information. Now it is expanded to personal interest. Readers can freely select their favorite chapters. Next, let the POD service supply. The person prints the contents into a book, and then sends the private book to your hands through mail or other shipping channels. The emergence of AOD can show that the new generation of consumers, in addition to the right to retrieve the content of this choice, also shows their personal consumer psychology.

BOD publishing concept

Instant Book is a new wave. No one knows how to make profits in printing five to ten books, but POD services can make it happen. The United States, Britain and Germany have large bookstores providing POD services. This mode of printing books from one book to dozens of books, ie Books On Demand, will be the prototype of the future publishing industry.

POD cost control

For suppliers of POD services, how many copies of the POD print must be sold before they can be returned? The technology and concept of AOD is just like POD, and it is still in the promotion stage. Its propaganda significance is greater than its economic purpose. Because it pays one yuan per page, an article that is less than five pages in length, is simply deducting the postage cost of Intellec, which is definitely not profitable.

Reprinting out-of-print books with the POD service, because books are not sold well or sold for long, and they are out-of-print, their sales volume must not be high, even in the POD market. Then, in order to reduce risks, bookstores try to convert many types of out-of-print books into PDF electronic files that exist in databases. Due to the large number of books, sales will naturally be large. The problem is that saves also require investment sources, and those out-of-print books may be books that were published before the editing process has been computerized, so they need to be re-entered and scanned for typesetting. The publishing house or supplier needs to do detailed research in this regard, and carefully control the cost, so that the printed matter of printing a POD is priced several hundred dollars!

Copyright and abuse

POD concept factor code technology can be practiced and carried forward, but at the same time it has to face other difficult problems: copyright and abuse.

The number of books sold by POD is difficult to count. A new generation of real-time books (Instant Book) will make book sales more vague. It will always produce books on computers. Unlike publishing books in printing houses, the number of books sold will be more difficult to count. The direct impact on the author's copyright tax revenue caused disputes between authors and publishing companies. When traditional books appear due to e-books, the sales volume is unsatisfactory, which will cause publishers to lose interest in purchasing copyrighted books.

Concern is about piracy and piracy. Online information supervision is in a situation that is difficult to monitor, or even out of control. The legal aspects also fail to effectively protect online intellectual property rights. Although people use POD services for simplicity, speed, and low cost, it is also too easy for people to become ignorant and abused. In the end, it may be more wasteful than traditional printing. On the other hand, the degree to which books are valued and cherished may also be greatly reduced. The above issues need to be chosen by the public.

From the needs of the market and the ever-changing consumption patterns, POD services must have room for development. However, whether or not they can be popularized will still require the cooperation of digital printing technologies in the future. Because investment in digital printing, machine cost is an important link, and the development of digital technology itself is not yet stable, and other supporting facilities, such as operating mode, copyright, laws, etc., are not consistent with the pace, so we should take a wait-and-see attitude .