Speaking of Flying Pen Press, I’m going to go ahead and shoot my mouth off for a series of posts about something I have no first-hand experience with. That would be publish-on-demand (or print-on-demand; same acronym, same meaning): why it has such a sucky reputation, and what a publisher who wants to use that production model might need to do to overcome that reputation.

Like I said, I haven’t dealt with this stuff myself. However, I’ve spent a lot of time at AbsoluteWrite.com’s Bewares and Background Check forum, and there are very wise people posting there. This is what I’ve learned from them.

Getting books onto bookstore shelves

Saturday I pointed out that one of Flying Pen Press’s major challenges will be getting their books shelved at brick-and-mortar bookstores. This is a huge sticking point for POD presses, because so few of them do the things necessary to make it happen. There’s nothing inherent in the POD model to prevent it, understand–booksellers don’t care how the ink got onto the paper so long as the product is up to standards. But the low-overhead of POD often attracts those who prize cost-cutting above all else. They neglect the marketing and distribution side of the business. They don’t send out review copies. They won’t offer competitive discounts to booksellers. They disallow bookstore returns. And as a result they don’t get on bookstore shelves.

Quick reminder: Where do you buy books most often? Under what circumstances do you give a book by an author unknown to you a chance to reel you in? When you go into a bookstore, where do you go first–the special orders desk, or the shelves? If you’re like most readers, those questions will quickly demonstrate to you why publishers need to get their books shelved. Not just in the special orders catalog. Not just available online.

Most of the time, a book not on shelves is a book that doesn’t sell. And a publisher whose books don’t sell to the general reading publish finds himself not making money. And he needs to make money. And his thoughts may turn on the temptation to make money in other ways. He may think, if the general reading public won’t buy the books, who will? Why, the author, of course! You can always count on an author to love his own book enough to buy it. To buy multiple copies of it. At outrageously inflated costs.

And lo! A vanity press is born.

This is why booksellers often shy away from titles marked as POD, even if the publisher allows discounts and returns. In so very many booksellers’ minds, “publish on demand” is synonymous with “vanity press.” What good does it do a publisher that the two terms aren’t synonymous in reality, if booksellers are convinced otherwise? Even a publisher who does POD right will have a hard time overcoming that misconception and getting shelved.

But POD failure is not a foregone conclusion. If a POD publisher is obviously crossing his Ts, dotting his Is, minding his Ps and Qs, and doing right by the the other 22 letters of the alphabet, that book will find its way to bookstore shelves–and thence to readers.