Print on Demand (POD) cannot defeat the primary fundamental of manufacturing consumer goods.
Economies of scale.
If you have the cash to back it, the per unit cost of a 400-page hard cover printed in a quarter million or more unit print run using hard plates instead of soft ones, cannot be beaten. At those volumes you can print for around $4/unit. The same book via a POD service capable of creating a hard cover (not all are) will most likely tip the scales north of $20. That’s the printing cost. You still have to have margins built into the price.
Wrapping books up to ship one at a time via UPS, FedEx, Post Office, etc. is an expensive method of shipping. Bound on pallets and shipped via container across the ocean to a truck and warehouse, then finally, via regularly schedule run to retail location, really doesn’t add that much to the per unit cost. There is a method to the madness when it comes to the manufacturing business. That, ultimately, is also the back half of publishing.
As to how those titles become New York Times best sellers before they are even available for sale, it is part of this pipeline madness. Pre-orders get a bigger discount. They allow a publisher to correctly size a print run for maximum efficiency. The pipeline flows and the distributor has to deal with the returns. The pipeline long ago had all of the “expensive” portions removed.
Mega publisher margins on hard covers are astounding. There was a time, and perhaps it still exists, when publishers would refuse to release a paperback version of a work until all of their hard cover inventory was sold. One of the main reasons there has been such a battle over ebook prices is that the major publishers did not want to release an ebook version until _after_ all of the hard cover sales had happened. Releasing cheaper versions of the same work quite simply cuts into profits. You will find this is why many ebook prices are on par with the paperback.
continued…
