Michael Holdsworth of Cambridge University Press reviewed the press's experience with on-demand printing, which Holdsworth characterized as "no longer a new technology. It's proven, been around for 10 years, and is better and faster all the time." His key point: even books that go out of print under traditional measures still have a market, which on-demand printing makes economical.
Holdworth said that of the press's 13,500 titles in print in 1998, 8200 were backlist and had sales of less than 100 units a year. In fact, the average backlist title sold just 32 copies in the year. Still, altogether they had sales of $8 million. Moreover, the 1000 titles discontinued in 1997 had sales of $3 million in the previous year, an amount that on-demand printing should be able to recoup.
One of the interesting difficulties of instituting on-demand printing is the culture in a house. People in the business believe, for example, that books have "a life." But that, he emphasized, is a life deermined by the cost systems of old print technology.
