Amazon and You

ANYONE WHO strolled the exhibit floor at the On Demand show in March can attest to the popularity of on-demand book printing and binding. The ease with which single copies of books can now be produced has spawned big changes in the book publishing industry.

Instead of hunting for a publisher to bankroll the printing of thousands of books (or paying a vanity publisher), authors can upload their novels to any of several sites, where they will stay in digital form until someone buys one. Digital presses push out a single copy, the author gets a tiny royalty check and the customer never knows the book didn’t exist a few days ago.

Though companies like Lulu have been using this model for years, book industry big shot Amazon has also jumped in, through a subsidiary called CreateSpace. The advantage Amazon offers—and it’s a great one—is that authors who upload books via CreateSpace will have their works listed for free on Amazon.com, the world’s most popular book browsing site.

Years ago I wrote and self-published a book about a solo bicycle ride I took down the East Coast, from Maine to Florida. Over time, I sold several hundred copies through book stores, bike clubs and a Web site. About a year ago, I put it up on Lulu to see what would happen. No, I didn’t strike it rich, but I did sell a handful of copies, which were then printed and shipped, with no effort required of me.

But Lulu, great as it is, is no Amazon; people don’t just go there to browse. So as an experiment, I just uploaded my book to Amazon via Create­Space. (See below for URL.) Despite directions that were a little unclear, I managed to create PDFs to Create­Space’s specifications. I was charged only for the printing and shipping of a proof copy, which was printed on an HP Indigo digital press. It looked as nice as the copies I had printed years ago, with a glossy cover that doesn’t quite lay flat but looks great. I was particularly impressed by the free ISBN number Amazon tosses in.

There are two reasons I’m telling you all this. First, as printers (who have probably printed a few books in your day), I thought you’d be interested in the latest developments in this books-on-demand craze. And second, as I went through the upload process with Amazon, I realized that in-plants can use this service to their advantage. True, anyone can upload a book for free, but setting up the PDFs of the text and cover may be too complex for those unfamiliar with publishing software. That’s where your in-plant’s expertise could come in handy. If you can market your ability to publish books on Amazon, complete with an ISBN number, you can remove most of the hassle from the process.

Of course, the newfound ease of self-publishing brings some questions to my mind, as a writer, about whether the world really needs all these self-published tomes, many of which lack the quality writing most of us expect from the books we buy. (I’ve read self-published works that were little more than accumulated e-mails.) But I’ll just leave that topic to the bloggers and say that on-demand books have turned the traditional book publishing business on its head. By playing your cards right, your in-plant just might be able to take advantage of this. Now if I could just figure out how to market that book of mine. Here’s the URL: http://www.amazon.com/Two-Wheels-Map-bicycle-journey/dp/0615120555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210693308&sr=8-1