Unlikely Trio Partnering on In-Store POD

An intriguing triad was announced recently. Kodak, the iconic film company still grappling with bankruptcy, is partnering with On Demand Books, maker of the Espresso print-on-demand book machine, and ReaderLink, distributor of books to nonbookstores, that is, discount stores, drugstores, and the like.

The threesome will be working together to merge Espresso’s book-printing functions with the image- and color-printing capabilities of Kodak’s photo kiosks. ReaderLink will help get the machines into the distribution channels where it already sells hard-copy books. Much of the focus, at least initially, will be on marketing the services to consumers or small groups who want to create photo books, such as family albums or local histories. Later, the emphasis may shift to providing access to backlist titles.

Publishers Weekly’s coverage of the announcement drew some skeptical remarks from commenters, who doubted the venture would get off the ground, given the availability of other services for creating custom books and for buying e-book versions of the backlist.

Kodak’s involvement was something of a surprise, as some have written off the company as near-dead. But back in May, the company’s POD group unveiled new workflow solutions for color printing. One drawback for the Espresso has been its inability to print color on inside pages. Kodak’s solution resolves that problem.

POD's tipping point approaches

A recent Publisher’s Weekly article (available only to subscribers) discusses Print-On-Demand (POD) technologies, with particular focus on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) by On Demand Books (ODB). The simplified concept behind POD is to enable bookstores to print needed books while eliminating storage stockouts, expanding inventory options while reducing actual physical inventory, and reducing other supply chain costs, thereby reducing total costs while enabling more content sales.

The EBM, which according to the story now retails for $185,000, is one option that bookstores today have to fulfill book orders in-house. ODB CEO Dane Neller says the rise of e-books has contributed to some of the EBM’s success by opening up new opportunities for print. He is also quick to point out that the EBM is not a POD solution, but a sales solution.

In the last year, ODB established a partnership with Xerox. According to Xerox’s first Thought Leadership Workshop about the EBM, many bookstores are using the EBM to compete with Amazon. For some stores, they see the book machine as the “salvation of the neighborhood bookstore,” says Jeffrey Mayersohn of Harvard Book Store. Stores that have book machines are seeing great growth at about 1,000 to 2,000 books per month in some cases.

Other options in the print arena include Hewlett-Packard’s Raptor machine, which has been in testing with three college stores for the last year. A philosophically different approach to the in-store solution, the Raptor could provide EBM with direct competition.

Recognizing that not all stores can invest in an in-store solution at this time, and seeing that there are other challenges to building a successful POD business, NACS Media Solutions (NMS), a subsidiary of the National Association of College Stores, is currently running a pilot program to create a regional POD network that can enable short runs of 1 to larger runs of 1000 or more, with rapid turnaround. The regional approach offsets downtime and will expand to provide printing "close to to the point of consumption" in order to reduce shipping and other supply chain costs. The NMS service will also utilize a cloud-based repository and include other service offerings designed to increase store success at POD.

We will be releasing more information about this program, our partners, and the pilots as we proceed over the next few months. If all goes well, NMS expects to do a soft launch in January, with a full launch expected perhaps as early as next March’s CAMEX.

POD v offset and the relation to inventory

E-read had a good piece recently asking the question, are PODs ebooks? With more stores and libraries engaging in print-on-demand (POD) activity, there may be some interest in the perspective and few data points presented.

The piece has a good contrast and comparison between offset printing (characterized as an approach of the past) and POD (characterized as an approach for the future). And it includes links to a two part discussion on "a future without inventory" that is also worth reading. (See Part 1 and Part 2).

HP in-store print-on-demand pilots

This semester, Hewlett Packard (HP) is conducting print-on-demand pilots at three universities. NMS helped to facilitate the pilots with the college stores at Portland State University, The University of Kansas, and Arizona State University. The stores are utilizing HP in-store print-on-demand technology to print and bind course materials. Each college store has worked out agreements with publishers to print a select number of titles. In addition, books in the public domain and open-source books can be printed. More information about each of the pilots can be found below.

A recent article from AZCentral.com discusses the pilot at ASU. McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons, and Cengage Learning have all made a limited number of titles available for the pilot. Some professors who own the rights to their books have also made the titles available for printing. As a result of the pilot, the textbook prices for several courses have reduced. Dennis Mekelburg, associate director of ASU Bookstore, estimates that students could save about a half-million dollars each semester if five percent of ASU classes switch to print-on-demand.

In another article Estella McCollum, director of the KU Bookstore, commented on the pilot at KU. She noted, “With this, we’re essentially never out of stock on the printable titles. We just have a more efficient option for purchasing.” The KU Bookstore hopes to expand the print options next semester to include: student projects, books, portfolios, cookbooks, and other projects.

An article about the pilot at Portland State University points out that the program is good for students, the store, and the earth because it reduces prices for students, keeps sales at the store, and reduces wasteful printing and transportation. The store hopes to get more publishers on board by next semester so that they can increase the amount of content that can be printed.

More information about these pilots will be available prior to CAMEX in February 2011.

Cornell University Library to offer more than 80,000 titles via POD

According to a recent press release, Cornell University Library plans to increase its print-on-demand offerings to more than 80,000 titles by the end of 2009. The additional titles will be added to the roughly 6,000 items currently available on Amazon.com. For the past two years, the library has been working with Microsoft to digitize the books which include many out of print titles.

Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies explained the initiative, "Although demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value. This initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books - they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf."

This announcement provides another example of the recent increase in the number of libraries offering digitized collections. As discussed in a previous posting, the movement to digital creates some new opportunities for libraries and college stores to work together. The creation of on campus partnerships could provide print-on-demand opportunities for the universities rather than Amazon.

Libraries and POD

According to an article on the U-Michigan website the university library at the University of Michigan will become the first university library to install an Espresso Book Machine by On Demand Books. The story was also reported in the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog. According to the U-Michigan article:

The book machine prints out-of-copyright books from the University's digitized collections. At a cost of about $10 per book, the service is available to researchers, students and the public. The printing process begins with a reader selecting a digitized book from U-M's pre-1923 collection or from another online source, such as the Open Content Alliance. Most books printed prior to the early 1920s can be reprinted without seeking the permission from whomever holds the copyright. Then the file is downloaded to the Espresso Book Machine, where it is formatted, printed and perfect bound with a four-color cover. A finished printed book takes 5-7 minutes, depending on the number of pages.

This is an interesting development, and continues to blur the lines between the business of the bookstore and that of the institutional library. It suggests opportunities for college stores and libraries to partner together, and perhaps offer new services that either one alone might not be able to afford.

Another story about the Espresso printers comes this week from Australia. This time by a bookseller. There is an interesting quote from this piece, that couples with the above story:

Print-on-demand means that you can extend the range of products in your stores by theoretically millions of books," Dymocks CEO Don Grover said.
"At this point in time the digitisation phase and the digital rights management and copyright issues that face the industry worldwide are preventing that from happening. So that's why there is a very narrow range of product that is available for print-on-demand technology."

Getting access to content that can be printed on demand has two challenges. Both challenges affect the availability of content for print-on-demand. The first challenge is the copyright and reproduction rights issues, which both of the above stories address. The second is a formatting or content format standard that allows the content to print correctly within the POD environment. These are both challenges that are likely to drop away in coming years. In addition, campus stores that have invested in POD have found that there are many other opportunities to generate revenue or save costs by producing campus-generated content. For stores where a faculty member selects an open-source textbook, local POD could ensure some revenue -- allowing stores to continue to be supportive of faculty efforts to reduce textbook costs for students.

RFI -- POD

We are seeking your input. As part of our new LLC and plans for upcoming pilots, we are looking to develop regional POD (print-on-demand) capabilities. We recently formed a taskforce to assist with evaluating some of our options and choices in this area. That group is in the process of scheduling its first meeting (around the upcoming RUSH period that comes with each new semester). I thought it would be useful to extend a few questions out to the larger world on this topic.

We plan to begin piloting POD services early in 2009. If you are a store, or a customer of a bookstore (faculty, student or other stakeholder), or perhaps a publisher providing content to stores, what would you want to see in terms of POD services or capabilities at the college store level? We have some different options for implementing regional POD, but are there scalable models for implementing POD that you have been thinking about? If you already use POD, what criteria did you use to pick your solution or approach? If there is other information you think the taskforce might find useful as they develop an RFP and evaluate options, please let me know. You can post your comments here, or send me e-mail directly. This is an opportunity to provide input into our process at the earliest of stages (even before we have our first official taskforce meeting), and thus an opportunity to make a difference.

Economist piece

There was an article on e-books that appeared in this month's Economist. The article makes reference to the fact that in some book categories (with textbooks being the specific example) digital is growing rapidly. They do not cite numbers or sources though. The do go on to say that digital could help publishers recapture the used textbook market, however. The article also makes interesting references to other technologies -- such as POD. I am not sure I fully agree with the last paragraph of the article (of which some of the commenters also make note). There are some unique values provided by other players in the distribution chain (between authors and consumers) that add value, and are able to do so at a lower cost than the publishers could do directly. Improving efficiencies along the supply chain -- definitely a thing we should do. Complete disintermediation, however, is much less likely at this point in time.

A New Life for Out of Print with POD

An interesting article appeared last week in the UK's Guardian. The article talks about how POD (print-on-demand) may help consumers and publishers alike by enabling access to books no longer in print. One of the lessons we seem to be learning about POD, which this article reinforces, is that it works well for fairly small runs, but breaks down with larger runs. The article does a good job of presenting different POD initiatives and some of their impact within the marketplace. Thanks to long-tail economics, niche titles have a marketable value again. For stores, this may represent opportunities to reduce costs or generate revenue from lower-number print runs. The article also cites some other popular POD developments and players, such as Lightning Source, Amazon, and Lulu. At NACS we are about to launch a taskforce to further explore some of the recent opportunities presented the association to implement POD at the store level. Since not every store can afford an espresso high-speed book printer, we are looking at and for some different options, including some regionalized POD models. In doing so we hope to reduce material costs for students, support environmental sustainability efforts, and, ensure a place for stores in an increasingly complex content environment.