Printing on Demand, How Easy it Has Gotten to Publish

Thanks for joining us on our recent Publishing Today Conference TV show on Printing on Demand. Printing on Demand means that a book or document is held in electronic form on a computer and when you want a copy it is sent to a digital printer and printed and bound into a professional looking book.

We are living at a great moment where we can publish books without actually having to publish and store physical books. Technology and cost have merged together to allow us to design a book or publication, load it up onto a site somewhere, get global exposure for it, have people find and buy it, and it gets delivered to the reader without ever touching it at an affordable price.

To make a book you had to deal with publishers who usually said no to our written masterpieces. You could also go it alone but it was quite expensive and very difficult to get into national distribution and all the stores. Books were expensive to make, store, sell and ship. Not any more. With modern day page layout software or even just a word processing program almost anyone can make a book without a lot of effort. Books now are created as pdf files and loaded up onto websites that can store it, display it, print and ship it. Usually at no cost to the author. The customer pays it all. Along with printing most of these sites also give a store to sell you books in. So what are some of these sites.

CreateSpace.com: Createspace is owned by Amazon.com which is a very cool thing. Being in Amazon is a must these days for all authors. The site is free or for a very small upgrade charge gives you gives access to all the Amazon.com properties. The quality is great, the styles are a little limited but hey it is on Amazon. I have used this service and it works very well. You can also print CD-Roms and DVDs on this service which is pretty amazing.

Lulu.com: Lulu is one of the major print on demand sites. Lots of different styles, hardcover, soft cover, spiral bound, lots of sizes and other products. I have used this service and the quality is excellent. It takes a little learning curve to get everything going but not to bad. Lulu also has different packages that you can upgrade to if you want to take a more proactive marketing campaign.

Blurb.com: Blurb is the site that a lot of artist and photographers use. They do a fantastic job with photo and art books. Again they also have an online module so that you can build it right on the site or or send up a pdf file.

It isn't just books that are printed on demand, you can do t-shirts, mugs, hats, bags, chairs, you name it you can get it done. We will cover some of those topics in a later post.

How to Self-Publish Your Book the CreateSpace Way: A Step-by-Step Guide