Seems like the gulf between traditional publishing and POD publishing and POD technology is getting smaller every day. A recent article by Benedicte Page posted on www.thebookseller.com discusses the recent decision of Random House to utilize Print On Demand (POD) technology to make some of their older and sometimes out of print books available through their POD list, Random Collections.
"Random is launching a dedicated website," says Page, "which will be interactive and searchable and there will be a launch list of 750 titles with further books added throughout the year."
Random House's deputy group sales director Faye Brewster, the coordinator for the Random Collections, said: "We have a massive archive of well-known and less well-known books and it is our policy to make as many available as possible. We've had a p.o.d. list for the past year-and-a-half and now that there is a critical mass of titles we can be proactive in marketing them."
Brewster said, "When retailers [book stores and other stores that sell books] are asked for a Random House book that is out of print, they can suggest it to us and we will check out the rights."
Does that mean Random House will soon be publishing new and unpublished books by unknown authors via the Print On Demand route? It's hard to say. But another well known traditional publisher, Harlequin, is indeed now offering POD/self publishing services to unpublished writers while it continues to publish books via the traditional advance-royalty route.
There is no doubt that the traditional publishing industry is struggling mightily to keep up with rapidly changing technology. It is also trying to keep pace with the rapid changes in reader demands, in particular with the e-book revolution now upon us.
Nearly 500,000 books were published last year, over half of those were done through various POD channels. Whether traditional publishers like it or not, Print On Demand technologies and POD publishers are revolutionizing the way readers and writers communicate.
Posted by
Russ Heitz
www.russheitz.com
