POD Publishing

A few years ago there was an ad on TV (by IBM or Xerox or someone like that) which was about a class being lectured by a sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic creative writing professor.

The professor was explaining–in his sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic manner–that it costs publishers thousands of dollars to produce, publish, and warehouse a book and, therefore, the vast majority of his young, hip students were doomed never to be published.

Through the micro-lecture the commercial contained, one of the hip, young students is shown smirking and rolling his eyes, until finally he can’t take it any more when he hears about the money aspect, and so he gets up and says, "That’s not true!"

The then explains to the sour, old, unlikable, unsympathetic–and now shocked–professor, and to the rest of the class, that there’s this new PRINT ON DEMAND (POD) process that uses digital technology to keep a stored record of the book, which can then be printed a few copies at a time, whenever there is an order to be filled. Even if the order is only for a single copy.

"So now," the student concludes, looking at the hip, young students around him, "we can all get published!"

The professor frowns. The class cheers. Go to the IBM (or Xerox, or whoever) logo. End of commercial.

When I saw this ad, I immediately rolled my eyes. It was unlikable for a whole host of reasons (like dissing old people and professors in a classic example of contemporary "cult of youth" prejudice).

But let’s think this through:

Haven’t we had Xerox machines for an awful long time? (At least, longer than any of the hip, young kids in the ad have been alive?) Couldn’t they "get published" by using those? Further, can’t anyone who wants to today go online and start a web page or a blog and get published that way?

Of course, that’s not what they mean. The kids in the commercial want to get published by having their work come out in the format of a book with a square spine and a full-color cover and all.

Okay, haven’t we had vanity presses for longer than any of these students have been alive? Anyone who wants to can "get published" through those with a real square spine book with a four-color cover and everything.

In fact, isn’t there even an appeal to vanity in the student’s joyful declaration that "Now we can all get published"? (It being, of course, understandable that an unpublished author would want this. It’s a very human and very understandable desire.)

What’s new here?

Basically this: Digital technology allows the printing costs to be lower since the book is produced in an on-demand manner. There also aren’t the same warehousing costs.

But the costs will still be substantial, at least if you want a professionally done book (as opposed to something you wrote and edited yourself in Microsoft Word). There are still all the charges for editing, copy editing, proofreading, typesetting, and cover design that the print on demand process doesn’t magically do away with.

Print on demand publishers also are frequently hooked up to the Internet and to online booksellers like Amazon, but vanity presses are starting to do that, too.

What we’re talking about here is just a somewhat cheaper vanity press process.

Done right, that not a problem. It blends into the self-publishing phenomenon, which can be entirely profitable and respectable (or a total disaster). Some folks have had very good experiences self-publishing, including using POD technology to self-publish.

But it is unjust and manipulative to hold out print on demand as a magical way of getting published to the aspiring author as if using this process would mean the same thing as getting published through a professional publisher.

What print on demand will mean for the typical user is that the person will get the satisfaction of knowing that a few dozen or hundred copies of his work have been printed off and sold (possibly to the author himself so he can give them away to relatives and friends) and that if someone stumbles across it on the Internet that that person could order a new copy.

That’s all fine and good, but it does not mean:

1. That there will be more than a small handful of copies in print.
2. That the book is professionally edited.
3. That the book is professionally designed and laid out.
4. That the book is remotely as good as one done by a professional publishing house.

As a result, indiscriminate use of POD technology will create an "amateur" stigma that continues to attach to many POD authors, just as if they had used a traditional vanity press.

Because basically what we’re talking about here is just a new way to get vanity press-quality books done–at least as long as it’s done with a "Now we can all get published" approach.

Getting published through a service that is undiscriminating among authors will not mean as much as getting professionally published, and it is unjust to and manipulative of POD commercials or services to pretend to authors that it will.

If he wants to do professional quality work through a print on demand service, that’s great. He’ll achieve respectability as an author, and he’ll deserve every bit of it.

But technology (thus far) can’t bring writing up to professional standards, and if this technology is used as a means of publishing material that would have been eliminated at the slush pile stage then it will simply result in more bad books being in print and more dissappointed authors out there.