What Does "POD" and "Short Run" Mean in 2009?
David Artman:
So the consensus is that "POD" is no longer a distinction in *quantity* or in *customer* or in *distributor*, but is merely a synonym for "digital printing." I could, for example, do a "POD" run of 100,000 copies from Lulu, and sell them from my site and mail any orders myself, and it would still be "POD" (from my perspective, as Lulu's customer) because of the technology employed by my print provider.
Um... OK. As a linguaphile, I shudder at trends that reduce the distinctions between terms, but I've (mostly) given up railing against "term creep" in this particular hobby/industry.
But I'd still wonder if the rest of the printing world concurs with such synonymity.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on June 03, 2009, 08:02:07 AM
Yes, I know it makes no sense. No one cares.
Oh, but I do... but then again, I am often "no one," and so I can resign myself to this minor linguistic irritation. After all, we've got a much bigger row to hoe, defending the denotations of GNS against definitional drift. ;)
Ron Edwards:
David, no one is defending the current usage. We're telling you how it is, just as you asked. This isn't a Forge-usage thing; it's what we've encountered among the printers and other people in book marketing ourselves when we worked with them. Whether you like it or not doesn't reflect on anyone who's replied to your post.
For clarity, I have no idea whether anyone would call an order of 100,000 books from (e.g.) Lulu "POD." No one here made any such claim.
You're welcome, incidentally.
Best, Ron
guildofblades:
Hi David,
from my recollection, POD was never a term "designed" to mean customer driven printing or single unit printing. Obviously, it could be used for both and has been since companies like LULU got started. If you look at where POD started it was with books and Lighting Source. As a division of Ingram, a rather large company, I don't think the original concept was to print and ship books one at a time, it was to be able to produce books in smaller quantities than traditional offset. Print and bundle these shorter runs for delivery to their warehouse for distribution down chain to the retailers. That distribution process, regardless of a how a book would be printed, would be grossly inefficient if done one book at a time. Shipping would kill the concept. But in theory they could do one of this book, one of that book, a dozen of a third book and combine them together to make shipments that made sense.
Publishers working with Lighting Source would have their books enrolled for special distribution through Igrams and these books were traditionally sold through at a tiny discount (ala, 15 to 20% whent he book industry retailers were used to 40-45% or better) because Ingrams recognized the inefficiencies of distribution done via POD initially and offset that cost with a lower discount.
As markets get more competitive and competitive printers came into the POD game the new entrants sought to lower the print barrier further with smaller direct fullfillment runs, leading ultimately to companies like LULU who pushed through the customer initiated printing and fulfillment independent of using the wholesale book distribution channels. But this comes at a price and hence why LULU is so expensive for direct fullfilment orders. The aren't produced by Lighting Source, who arrived at the conclusion that single and tiny prints only worked for them when they could recover the cost BOTH through the raw printing costs they passed onto the publisher and an extra 20% or so of the retail as based on the lower discount offered to retailers.
For most print productions the world over, they are typically produced "on demand". When printing a new Stephen King novel, they don't print 500,000 copies with an expected demand of just 1000 sales. They have historical data to draw upon with an expectation of demand and they judge their print runs based on that expected demand. Magic the Gathering sets, D&D books, etc, etc, do the same. Digitally printed books (or card games) simply makes it so the volumes being printed makes it possible for publishers to still print when the apparent (or guessed upon) demand is significantly smaller than the traditional pricing limits off offset or web presses. Printing only when an end consumer has already paid is certainly an accurate method of judging demand, but far from the only one and only a recent arrival in the printing industry. Items printed in that fashion still only represent a finite number of products that are digitally printed.
I suspect a number of digital printers began to utlize the term "short print runs" when the term POD garnered a negative connotation back in its early days. To me that suggests basically, anything printed in quantities less than traditional print runs, would fall under the concept of POD. Whether the "demand" side of that term is being driven by past sales history, data mining and marketing metrics, polling, or customer initiated purchased done online (or off), its all effectively small print runs designed to meet niche market demands. I think the indie role playing side of the gaming hobby gravitated towards the LULU method of single order fulfillment as a means of judging demand because it allowed a goodly number of publishers to nearly totally eliminate the risk in printing and publishing, especially when you consider most small game publishers and in particular the indi and small press start ups lack the resources or history to be able to judge demand for a title with enough accuracy to be basing their prints runs on much more than a guess.
It has long been my stance that any small game publisher can sell at least 100 copies of just about any game they design and publish. If they are pushing their title much at. So n my eyes, demand starts at 100 anyways. Though for ease of cash flow, we do maintain just 25 units as a minimum starting order for POD cards and 10 units as a minimum re-order. For board games, assuming we can nail down the process, runs would start at 100 simply due to the practical side of how the glue mounting process would have to work for game boards and setup boxes. Its entirely possible we might be able to reduce that down to 25 of an individual item, if say 4 different items all with the same box and board sizes were to be printed at the same time. But not really sure about that yet. Either way, 25 or 100, for board games, definately falls under the spirit of being able to produce in quantities far less than traditional runs (typically starting around 5,000 for board games) in order to meet and fulfill niche market demands.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
David Artman:
Ron, I wasn't targeting anyone who replied; sorry to seem so. Thank you.
Thanks for the background, Ryan.
guildofblades:
>>Thanks for the background, Ryan.<<
No problem. I agree the term can be rather vague. Its come to mean different things to different groups. The differences being levels of expectations, I suppose.
If looking for "print a copy only after one has been ordered by the end consumer" a safer term would be "one off", which too is bandied about a bit in printing circles.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.gobretail.com
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
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