Thursday, May 31, 2007

Amazon to provide 'lightening' service on POD

Amazon Booksurge subsidiary has announced agreements with major publishers including; HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Springer, Gale, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, Kensington, Hal Leonard, LexisNexis, and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA).

Booksurge aims to follow a true print on demand mode and not the current short print run dominated one. It aims to deliver next day and therefore the same service as it offers physical books.

It will therefore be interesting to see how this works out in a world where the rights reversal debate is all about the long tail on demand and being never out of print and the environmentalists have yet to wake up to the facts that although it cuts down on the current ‘print just in case’ over production, POD paper is far from ‘green’ and the process is very environmentally un friendly.