Demand for print-on-demand

Printing Impressions has a piece pushing POD as an addition to a printer’s armory. They keep focussing on customization, which may become an important feature of book making I guess. Not sure however that I’d like to receive a book with a line printed in the front saying “specially printed for Richard”. However the technology exists to provide just this “service”. There is however no reason to question the POD impulse. As I suggested in a recent post, the print industry has been late to the party on print-on-demand, having long left it to specialists. Of course this was at least as much a result of publisher’s caution in the face of a new technology as it was printer prejudice*, but now we are all on the home stretch. Ultimately book printers will provide whatever it is that publishers will buy, and it seems we are all beginning to wake up to the fact that improved margins will result from an almost total elimination of waste in inventory management. __________________ * Printing well…