POS versus POD

Dan Poynter, Director of the Book Summit, recently shared his thoughts on "print on spec" versus "print on demand:

“On Spec” can be defined as short for "speculation." Work done "on spec" is done for no guaranteed remuneration, in hope of winning the job, campaign or account in question.

Detroit builds cars on spec, some builders construct houses on spec, and traditional publishing produces books on spec.

When cars or houses don’t sell, the price is lowered. When books don’t sell, they are shipped back to be remaindered or pulped. Unsold books have to be eaten; a waste of time, energy and resources.

An alternative is POD (Print On Demand) where books are purchased before they are manufactured. This is the business model pioneered so successfully by Dell Computer. Dell gets paid for a computer before it even buys the parts to make it.

Printing books on spec makes sense when there are many pre-production orders and a realistic anticipation of a large demand. Printing is a quantity game; the more you print, the less the per-unit cost. But returns raise the per-unit cost.

The choice is between POS and POD: print on spec and print on demand.