Re: print on demand

**"* A* <j*@aquapic.com>**

> Has anyone used a POD publisher recently? 

I went to a fascinating talk on POD at a local Society of Authors 
meeting this Spring. One writer wanted to publish her own historical 
book using a well established, medium sized firm of book printers who 
carried out both conventional lithoprint and POD. Her book was 
paperback with a colour cover and a group of colour pages in the 
centre.

She had ordered up a sample copy before her full print run, but was 
dissatisfied with the results and took it up with the printer who ran 
a number more copies, again not up to her demanding standards.

At her talk we had the chance to examine various copies from the 
print runs, noting the quality of the binding, the squareness (or 
otherwise) of the spine, the variation in the colour of the cover, 
and the quality (or lack of it) on the photos for the inside colour 
pages. 

All though all the output was 'just acceptable', none of it was 
particularly good. She took the time to drive the distance and have a 
chat to the director of the printing company.

He pointed out the simple arithmetic. On the conventional lithoprint, 
perhaps four or five jobs were run each day, and the expert litho 
technicians would take the time to set up the equipment before each 
run, altering the inks and papers as required. On POD perhaps 90 or 
100 different books would be printed each day; the computer 
technicians would typically spend no more than 20 minutes per job 
setting up for each run, with little time to alter precise colour 
variables between jobs. Generally there is less flexibility on the 
types of paper stock used.

In the end she chose to have the BW sections of her book printed by 
POD, but all the colour plates and cover run on conventional litho. 
The book was then assembled with more traditional binding equipment. 
The end result was notably superior. In her case, as little as 1,000 
books tipped the cost barrier to be more efficient than POD, and in 
her mind, until the quality of electronic colour printing improves, 
she would be sticking with lithoprint for the colour plates.

James Allison
Cheltenham UK

_______________________________________________
gardenwriters mailing list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters

GWL has searchable archives at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters

Send photos for GWL to gwlphotos@hort.net to be posted
at: http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos

Post gardening questions/threads to
&quot;Gardenwriters on Gardening&quot; &lt;gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org&gt;

For GWL website and Wiki, go to
http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters