If you've ever been curious about print-on-demand, have a read of our latest interview Publish and Be Damned
and check it out



[Edited by david bruce at 11:57:00 on 06 April 2004
Reason: link fixed]

I would - but it says File could not be found when I click on the link

link fixed now.

It's an interesting interview, and their website seems reasonable enough. However, I still remain a little wary of the POD method, perhaps illogically, but I don't trust it.

For everything I've read about it, it still seems a little like vanity publishing given another name. I'm not blasting it, I'm simply seeking to understand it. If everyone went down this route (and I'd hope they would at least have tried to be published on merit first for a good long while) then surely any old garbage could feasibly be in print.

The responsibility of marketing is then in your hands. That is no small thing. As anyone who has worked in sales or marketing knows, selling a single product continuously isn't easy and would detract from your creative time. Effectively, you'd suddenly be publisher, agent and writer...with a full time, or even a part time job as well, this would be an insurmountable workload. It seems to this writer like taking on an impossible task.

Now, I'm not saying that all POD books are bad, or that all their authors are either vain or in despair of being published by merit. But there does seem to be that faint whiff about it. I know it's good in terms of a book never going out of print, say, but then, a really good book rarely does anyway as it will always, almost magically, find a new audience with each generation i.e The Hobbit, The Narnia Books...Christ! Even Shakespeare!

I'm interested to see other peoples thoughts on this. Is taking the POD route giving up? Selling out? Or is the future for an overcrowded market of writers and their unpublished works? To be fair, I'd feel a little cheap presenting my book to friends and family when I knew it was only down to being a POD. Maybe that's just pride.

My thoughts on this one are that self-publishing and Print on Demand self-publishing is a very good idea - it gives control back to the author, and yes this means the author has much more responsibility for quality, marketing, publicity, sales etc, but that can be fun too - and you learn such a lot! Then again, I'm prejudiced as I self-published my 1st poetry book in January and had a fantastic time with it, and am working towards - with editorial help - self-publishing my first novel later in the year.

I think there's room in the writing world for all approaches to publishing - mainstream and commercial (which I just can't do!) and more specialised and quirky, which you will probably need to do yourself - more power to all our elbows is what I say!

Anne B

Having looked at the POBD site a while back when one of their number was hanging around the WW forums, I already think that this method of self-publishing is excellent for people like me that might write a novel for distribution among friends, or just maybe want to see their work presented nicely.

Should I ever complete a novel, and not manage to get it published via the commercial method in, say, six months or so, I would seriously consider self-publishing, stick it on my shelf and give a few copies out to friends, and start work on novel number 2.

Your comments are helpful. As I've mentioned, its not an area I'm completely au fai with. I agree with the bartender (yikes) that one should try their best to go through normal channels first. I'm not ready to give up yet...we'll see in about a year...

J x