Walking into Lightning Source's sprawling plant just outside of Nashville, Tenn., CEO J. Kirby Best recites a list of print-on-demand milestones: Lightning Source has grown from three employees in 1997 to more than 500 today; the company digitally scans about 2,000 books a week and prints 1.2 million books a month. “It took us seven years to print 10 million books,” says Best as we stroll through the 159,000-sq.-ft. building. “This year we published 10 million books in the first 11 months.”
Welcome to LaVergne, Tenn., headquarters of Lightning Source and the center of the POD universe. A subsidiary of Ingram Industries and sister company to Ingram Book Group, Lightning Source was founded in 1997 and over the past 10 years has grown into the largest of about a dozen companies—among them BookMobile, IBT, BookSurge and Bridgeport National Bindery—offering a wide range of POD services. As Lightning Source prepares to mark its 10th anniversary, the use of POD technology continues to grow and transform the economics of book publishing.
For years, print-on-demand has held out the promise of a new business model. Rather than print thousands of copies of a book and then work frantically to sell them, POD stands the usual publishing model on its head. POD offers publishers the possibility of selling a book before it is printed and then delivering it directly to a consumer, to a store or to a publisher's warehouse. As the differences in the quality between POD and conventional offset printing continue to shrink—“it's getting damn close to offset,” says Best—publishers are taking a good long look at the potential of POD technology to eliminate warehousing entirely and manage their supply chain as never before.
Nevertheless, publishers contacted for this article maintain that offset printing remains more cost effective for print runs over about 1,000 copies. Best, noting that Lightning Source can print up to 45,000 copies a day, is quick to argue that the difference in cost can be a myth, insisting that the cost-per-copy advantage of offset printing should be balanced against the prospect of pallets of unsold copies sitting in warehouses or sales lost because not enough copies are printed. “Wherever there are books just sitting on a shelf, that's a problem that we can solve,” says account exec David Prentice. “There will be a tipping point for POD frontlist printing. We can service any print run but those of the largest-selling authors.”
Print-on-demand publishing, also called digital printing, is the process of storing book content as a digital file and printing and binding the book only when a customer for it is assured. The process takes one of two approaches: true POD—one book is printed and shipped only after a customer buys it—or short-run digital printing, where multiple copies (from a handful to a several hundred) can be produced for limited inventory stocking or warehousing. Both approaches use the same technology and offer publishers, retailers and consumers an ever-growing list of possibilities.
Lightning Source and other POD printers are working to create a never-out-of-print publishing nirvana. A visit to the LaVergne facility is like a trip into a future world where any book on any topic can be purchased, printed and delivered to a customer in fewer than 48 hours.
Best says business is good at Lightning Source and getting better. To prove it, he says they're building an additional 65,000-sq.-ft. facility for book scanning at the LaVergne plant. This is in addition to a 130,000-sq.-ft. Lightning Source plant in Allentown, Pa., and a 22,000-sq.-ft. plant in the town of Milton Keynes in England. These plants publish everything from Microsoft computer books to reprint editions of 16th-century manuscripts. Best points out that POD has been a boon to university presses; has enabled legions of self-publishers; and created what he calls “virtual publishers”—houses like Kessenger.net, a rare book house with no warehouse that sells its POD titles via the Web.
David Taylor, Lightning Source senior v-p of global sales and managing director of Lightning Source U.K., says the company is looking to grow internationally. “The Pacific Rim—Singapore, Korea and Australia—are likely next spots for growth,” he says.
The POD Landscape
While Lightning Source is the biggest POD printer, it's not alone. Don Leeper is CEO of BookMobile, a POD and short-run printer based in Minneapolis, Minn., that began as a design and composition house. Leeper recalls that he read an article about POD printing in 1996 and thought, “maybe there's something in this.” Since then, the firm has grown from one full-time employee to a staff of 35 servicing about 500 repeat customers. BookMobile uses POD to produce galleys for indie houses like Coffee House Press and Copper Canyon, as well as university presses such as Harvard. BookMobile is also using POD technology for frontlist first printings under 3,000 copies, usually poetry from small literary publishers and university presses. “We are competitive with offset on price and quality,” says Leeper. “There was some stigma attached to POD quality, but no more. Our books are available through all the standard retail channels and most customers can't tell the difference.”
Kent Larson, v-p of edition sales at Bridgeport National Bindery, agrees with Leeper: “The average customer couldn't tell the difference between our POD and offset.” BND is a family-owned business that specializes in library bookbinding and has been in existence since 1947. The company has a 75,000-sq.-ft. facility in Agawam, Mass., and started experimenting with POD in the 1990s. “At first we were afraid we were taking business from our printer customers,” Larson says, “but they approached us about doing short-run jobs—25, 50, 200 copies, runs that were just too small for them.” And Larson says business is growing. “Our POD unit has gone from three people to 20 people in three years.” He says 55% of his business is with conventional book publishers; 30% with “virtual” publishers like Lulu.com and Shutterfly; and 15% comes through its binding work for printers. “We're still new to this, but we represent the new shift to the one-book-at-a-time paradigm,” Larson says.
Bill Clockel, CTO at Integrated Book Technology, left his job at John Wiley & Sons 17 years ago to found IBT in Troy, N.Y., with his partners, IBT president John Paegelow and v-p Bob Lindberg. Clockel estimates that IBT has been growing “about 20% a year.” IBT has 135 employees and works with about 200 conventional publishers, specializing in textbook publishers like John Wiley and Pearson, as well as STM publishers and university presses.
Clockel emphasizes several points about POD and short-run digital printing. “Fast turnarounds link publishers more directly to their vendors,” he says. STM houses, which often receive backorders before their books are even released, “can print backorders right away and free up space and money.” IBT sends digital book files to its POD partners in Europe and Singapore—“a wonderful way to produce a book right where it will be sold. And it's more environmentally friendly.” Clockel says POD allows printers to offer an integrated suite of services, from editorial to printing, binding and shipping. “Placing an order for everything in one place can save time and money,” he notes. Clockel says IBT is entering into a partnership with Books International, a warehouse and fulfillment Center in Virginia with about 70 publisher clients. IBT will set up a print-and-bind POD operation in the BI facility this spring. “We'll print the books,” says Clockel, “and Books International can ship them to a store, a single customer or to a publisher's warehouse.”
POD in the House
Large publishers contacted by PW primarily see POD in terms of Chris Anderson's theory of the long tail—online searching and digital printing combine to make even the most obscure titles profitably available to anyone who wants them. Adrian Moore, POD manager at Hachette, says the company began using POD extensively in 2000 and has some 1,000 titles in the program. Even Moore agrees that “POD quality is indistinguishable from offset,” and says, “We're close to a tipping point.” While Moore says Hachette uses POD primarily for backlist, it also uses POD for limited runs of seasonal titles.
First printings of large-run books are done on offset, says Moore, while the reorders are shifted to POD. Some books, like George Stephanopoulos's 2000 autobiography All Too Human, go into the POD program and find an audience. Moore confers with editors and gets a weekly list of out-of-stock titles—i.e., books on the verge of going out of print—that he uses to target titles for POD. “Our CEO wants us to monetize the backlist,” says Moore, “so, yes, we have many more books going into POD. It's doing well and there are even breakaway titles, books that do better than anyone could have predicted.”
Over at S&S, Dennis Eulau, executive v-p for operations, doesn't believe POD is cost-effective for prime-time frontlist printing. “The cost is still up,” he says, about $4—$5 a book, compared to roughly a little more than a $1 per book for offset. “Most people want POD for the long-tail effect. Most of our authors just want their books to be available.” But Eulau also said, “You just don't know. We've had books go into POD, find a community and have to be moved back to offset.” In fact, Eulau says, when it comes to picking backlist titles for the program, “nonfiction, fiction—it doesn't much matter.” S&S has about 2,600 titles in its POD program and, he says, “We're adding about 300 to 400 titles each year.”
Jed Lyons, president of Rowman & Littlefield and sister company National Book Network, agrees with Eulau that POD quality is much improved, and that the format is not appropriate for every title. “POD doesn't work very well for $16 trade paperbacks, but is perfect for deep backlist titles and specialized titles where price is not an issue.”
R&L installed a POD machine at its Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., warehouse nine years ago and now also has one in its U.K. facility. The equipment is run by Edwards Brothers. Lyons says that the number of copies printed has increased from 5,000 units a month when the equipment was first installed to 30,000 units per month now. Lyons estimates that R&L has approximately 7,000 titles in its database that are available only through POD. “We have 50,000 ISBNs, but before print-on-demand, we weren't taking advantage of the long tail. With POD, we have a new revenue stream that's been tremendous,” Lyons says.
