I will make a very safe prediction ; *firm sale* will be the norm throughout the entire booktrade many many decades before "in(retail)store" POD is the preferred distribution facility.

I'm not so sure Clive. I certainly don't think the ubiquity of POD usage is decades away. "Espresso" will be "smaller, faster, cheaper" in a much shorter time frame than decades. 30-odd million books are out of print: the potential "long tail" market is huge.

My bet is that the economies of scale will catch up with the technology whilst most of the book industry is looking the other way.

The only portable "machine" capable of case-binding is the 'time-served' human : it will be decades before they are replaced !

POD is but a another cog in the bookworld wheel.

Me thinks that Mark Thwaites is seriously underestimating the number of oop titles ; it will probably also be decades before all the bookworld's past output has been digitalised.

Clive, The elimination of returns is only one aspect of all this. The potential for extending a bookshop's range without increasing shelving, the elimination of much freight cost, the renewed availability of many thousands of titles, the greater reach into emerging markets overseas, the saving of trees are all worthwhile notwithstanding the returns issue. I don't believe that there is any other solution . Incidentally, the initiative you mentioned a few eeks ago turns out to relate only to backlist where there are relatively few returns anyway - so a very minor and so far unrequited initiative.

Richard

POD is viable and essential for some titles : however, I am firmly convinced that to get both the quality (range of paper colour, weight etc) this will be completed at a central distribution depot. Do yourself a favour please get a POD copy of Professor Peters "The Hajj" 9780691026190 : each copy I have obtained matches the quality of its companion "Mecca, a literary history of the muslim holy land" - albeit that the POD is not casebound. Ask yourself, how if ever, this is going to be obtainable on anything other than a large POD machine.

Will the "high street" manufacture all goods in their shops, of course not : central distribution will be used for clothing, electrical and household goods let alone for food.

Much waffle is spoken about the long tail as though the booktrade has not for many centuries had a very efficient oop supply chain : the quality secondhand booktrade were slightly concerned at the prospects of all this POD, until they did the maths and realised that it will be decades before all the world's book output has been scanned (even if quality, low cost, POD is available)

This morning a couple selected, amongst other titles, a copy of Nell Leyshon "Black Dirt" (Picador) : here in my stock, but very probably not in most bookshops - even in Somerset. Do the other shop's staff know about the books existence, if not how will the customer purchase if they don't already know about the book, be it available "in print", POD, or oop ???

Couldn't agree with you more Richard. We're dying to get our hands on one of those machines. In fact the one pictured would sit nicely in our basement. And it's so pleasing to hear you talk about sensible rights management. There's no reason why you as a publisher couldn't license us to print your backlist as and when a customer needed it in the same way we have an account with Macmillan distribution and physically order the book.

Just one query though. As a chunk of Macmillan's empire is it's distribution arm aren't you undermining your own business? That's not meant to be facetious, it's just one of the biggest hurdles I could see in this process.

And Clive, I remember when dot matrix printers cost a fortune and were the size of your kitchen. Now they're giving away photo quality printers at Currys. The technology will be with us sooner than you think.

And I should add that we're really keen to work with publishers in our own tiny way to help speed this thing along. It all just makes so much sense.

Clive Keeble asked, "Do the other shop's staff know about the books existence, if not how will the customer purchase if they don't already know about the book, be it available "in print", POD, or oop ???"

I had never heard of Nell Leyshon so looked her up. There are 20 new or used copies of Black Dirt available via Amazon from £1.25, [The most expensive is £65!] But the fact that there are no reviews – Black Dirt was published by Picador in 2004 - is discouraging.

Anne

It seems to me that Clive's admirable concern for quality is largely misplaced. I would imagine that most books actually sold these days are simple paperbacks without colour (except on the covers) and these could easily be printed to high enough quality (possibly higher than currently) on machines in shops and libraries. I also wonder if the long backlist tail is a bit of a distraction. Why not frontlist? If shops only carried one copy of each title (a display copy if you must), they could display more titles and print off copies on demand for customers who have been inspired by the display copy. I see no reason why this can't happen for front-list too.

Anne

Thankfully the bookworld neither starts nor ends at Amazon : I couldn't care less who reviews what, or what lists (except at what "new" price) on the Basin.

Nell Leyshon is a very accomplished playwright - she has written several plays for both Radio's 3 & 4 : her first fiction title was "Black Dirt" published by Picador in both h/b (now oop) and p/b (current in print), Picador are scheduled to publish her second book - 'Devotion' - in Feb 2008. Nell's best known play is "Comfort me with Apples" which is published by Oberon : they also published "The Farm" by the same playwright.

"Black Dirt" received very complimentary reviews in The Observer and Sunday Telegraph to name but two literary broadsheets.

The question is not "to POD or not to POD". The question will be "centralized POD or distributed POD." And I think distributed POD has its place, but I doubt very much that it is in many bookstores and libraries in shouting range of a strong centralized POD operation for quite some time.

I don't know the relative cost of an Expresso-generated book versus a Lightning one. But let's remember that any bookstore or library can have any POD book in a day or two now. Once we get past the "wow" factor of having the book made on premises, the related questions of price and quality become determinants.

And before we get too carried away about what bookstores won't need to carry or pre-manufacture (either way creating risk), recall that it takes Expresso (at least) five minutes to make a book. Not too many bookstores can survive selling 12 books an hour. And customers may find the "printed here and now" feature a little less alluring if there are four people in front of them.

But if this DOES work more efficiently than I'm imagining, then why stop at bookstores and libraries. Wouldn't we expect to see one of these in every Kinko's and Staple's as well? If that were the case, great for the publishers and authors, but what would it do to the bookstores and libraries?

One case history worth recalling. A very large book retailer gave up its own POD operation several years ago and turned the activity over to Lightning. The idea was, we'll take it back in a few years. A few years later, Lightning had added another trim size to its line plus hardbacking and color capabilities. So the retailer, now having sufficient volume to support the prior capabilities, doesn't have the volume to support the new ones.

What will the Expresso-owning store think when they find they are ordering half their POD books from elsewhere because they can't handle the size or other spec requirements?

This is a fascinating discussion, with valid points being made on all sides.

I'd like to ask a question, though, that Mr Charkin touched on but didn't attempt to answer in the initial post: What IS a fair rights reversion model in a world where nothing goes out of print?

I don't see this as an either/or technology. The question is not centralized or distributed to my mind. Both will exist simultaneously serving different markets (with some overlap). Centralized POD will never help with with all the lost sales in my store from people who will either buy it now or not at all. If I can print it for them within a reasonable time frame, they will buy it. Publishers and booksellers both win.

I don't see having the machine as diminishing my stock, except perhaps for multiples of public domain classics which we sell regulalry and will now sell under our own imprint.

I think there is a very real possibility that Kinkos and many other copy shops will have such a machine at some point and cut out bookstores. That is why I want to get in early and make it known that my store offers this service. I do not expect to offer photography books with the Espresso, but it can make any format up to 8.5 x 11 so it is quite flexible. There are so many books that it will be able to print that I am not concerned about the ones it can't - that is what publishers are for. And I suspect they will be there for decades to come. Hopefully, all backlist will be available to print in the near future.

This is a technology that will compliment a good bookstore's operations. It will not change the direction of the spin of the earth or get us out of Iraq. One nice thing about this: I will finally be able to price books myself!

I found myself agreeing with so much of this that I'm at risk of ceasing to be contrarian. David I asks the question about what is a fair reversion clause. I'm not sure that any of the existing measures (copies in stock, revenues etc) will work. Perhaps a time limitation of some sort is the answer. But, as I said at the beginning of the post, the argument will run and run and I'm alreday feeling tired!!

I'd also like to suggest you have a look at the ongoing discussion and criticism of these issues at the POD CRITIC blog, particularly this post:

http://podbookreview.blogspot.com/2007/06/pod-critic-sees-print.html