Harvard University Press has teamed up with Acme Bookbinding of Boston to create a print-on-demand system capable of producing books whose quality equals that of a traditional offset press. John Walsh, production manager at HUP, said that the books in the program have all been printed as facsimiles of the last edition, and that there have been no changes to typefaces, font sizes and margins. The titles appear in their original trim size.
Company president Paul Parisi said Acme has been printing single-copy titles for the library market—and to library standards—for years. "We've been doing on-demand for libraries forever," Parisi said, noting that the next natural step for the printer was to work with a publisher looking for high-quality POD service. Parisi said that once Acme "gets the model refined," it will look to do work with other publishers.
To launch its program, HUP has printed 25 copies each of 100 classic titles, many of which were out-of-print. HUP will eventually make all out-of-print titles available through the program, beginning with titles in which some consumer interest has been shown, said Mary Kate Maco, HUP's director of publicity. Customer orders will be sent through the Harvard warehouse, TriLiteral, which will forward the order to Acme, which will ship the book to the customer.
HUP sales director Susan Donnelly believes the deal with Acme is just the beginning of what will be a developing program. Donnelly said that at some point, HUP could use POD technology not only to print its backlist books but to print a small portion of its frontlist. The technology "allows us to see how the book is doing in the marketplace and, if it turns out to have more legs than we expected, we can respond immediately," she said.
