Print on Demand (POD) simply means that a purchase of the book spurs the printing. It does not mean that it's a vanity or self-published book. Why people keep getting this confused is beyond me. It's very simple. On the other hand, so what if somebody self-publishes? It's not exactly the Crime of the Century. Nevertheless, here are a couple of sites that review POD books:
POD Critic
P.O.D.lings
There are additional links from these sites.
The Cellophane Queen: 'Cause you can look right through me, Walk right by me and never know I'm there...
POD is the best friend of a small press publisher. At NDP we use Booksurge, which is through Amazon. In some ways it is vanity, but in others it's not.
ReplyDeleteIf a writer submits their own book, then that would be a vanity publisher. But for a publisher like NDP, we're able to use them and put our label on the books. The books never have to go out of print...we don't have to buy several hundred copies...and the books are automatically listed on Amazon and several other on-line sites.
Compared to the cost of going through a printer, POD can't be beaten...and I really think that within the next ten years, even the big boys will be using POD...the overhead savings are huge, and it can also save the bookstores a lot of money. B&N tried it a while back, but it didn't really work, but I think with the technological advancements we've had, and that we're going to have, POD will be the future of publishing.
I wish people would stop getting this confused. I think of POD like Red Box, this video rental thing that makes your DVD on the spot. This means that the rental machine is about as large as a Coke machine instead of full scale video rental story. If Random House could figure out how to make POD machines at Burger King or Starbucks or something, only then would people learn the difference.
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