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Sept. 21, 2000 -- Print-on-demand from the perspective of the do-it-yourself publisher

Transcript of the live chat session that took place Thursday, September 21, 2000. These sessions are normally scheduled for 12 noon-1 PM US Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4) on Thursdays.

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Threads (reconstructed after the fact):

Today's participants
Introductions
Working with 1st Books and Lightning Source
Wrapup

Today's Participants

Mike Joyce review of the book he translated and published

Barbara Seltzer (Home Page)

Richard Seltzer (Home Page)

Bob Zwick (Home Page)

Introductions

10:17 - Richard Seltzer: All -- welcome. We'll be starting at noon Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4). Today we plan to talk about print-on-demand from the perspective of the do-it-yourself publisher.
10:58 - Richard Seltzer: All -- we'll be starting in a couple minutes. As you connect, please introduce yourselves and let us know your interests.
11:00 - Bob Zwick: Hello everyone
11:01 - Richard Seltzer: I just got a phone call from Emmett Joyce, one of the translators of Good Soldier Svejk. He's trying to connect now.
11:03 - Barbara: I am Barbara Seltzer, someone who is interested in learning about printing online. Rich, there was no request for an email address. This was a nice feature in the other one, so people could respond to each other separately.
11:05 - Richard Seltzer (Re: 11:03 - Barbara 'I am Barbara Seltzer, someone who...'): Barb -- I have set this new chat room up to let people in quickly, with a minimum of hassle. But you can "register". (At the end I'll ask people for their contact info.)
11:06 - Richard Seltzer: Welcome, Mike Joyce. Glad you could make it. Sorry that Zenny is tied up today.

Working with 1st Books and Lightning Source

11:08 - Richard Seltzer (Re: 11:06 - Mike Joyce 'Unprepared, but at least I'm here....'): Mike -- I understand that your book is available from 1st Books. Can you tell us what you had to do to get the book ready for them (e.g., conversion to PDF?), and what costs and miscellaneous unexpected hassles were involved? Did you just have to deal with 1st Books? Or did you also have to make a separate deal with a print-on-demand printer?
11:10 - Mike Joyce: 1st books asked for our mss in Word, then they convert it for Lightning /source. That's about all this middlemand did for us really. We HAD to deal with them at that time.
11:13 - Barbara (Re: 11:10 - Mike Joyce '1st books asked for our mss...'): How did you hook up with 1st Books in the first place?
11:13 - Mike Joyce: Interestingly, the only way we have to check how the book is doing is by clocking amazon.
11:14 - Richard Seltzer: So you only had to deal with 1stBooks? That's strange. I wouldn't think that you'd be able to design "pages" using Word. I thought you'd need to use something like PageMaker, or Microsoft Publisher, or Quark. When you turned the file over to 1st Books did you even know how many pages it would turn out as a book?
11:15 - Mike Joyce: We saw an article on pod in Time that mentioned them.
11:16 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- How does Amazon get into the picture? Don't people buy directly from the 1stBooks site?
11:17 - Mike Joyce: Lightning Source is a spinoff of Ingram, the giant distibutor, who makes it available for ordering by anyone, including Amazon.
11:17 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- What did you have to pay for setup fees etc.? And what does it cost you per book that you order directly for yourselves? And what do you get when a customer buys the book from 1st Books?
11:18 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Is it possible/desirable to deal directly with Lightning? or do you have to go by way of 1st Books? What value does 1st Books add to the process? And who gets paid what?
11:19 - Mike Joyce: We paid about $1100 and demanded a $300 rebate for non-existent publicity. They charge us the same as everyone else.
11:20 - Mike Joyce: However, we are supposed to get a 30% royalty.
11:20 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Yikes! $1100? For what? That's an outrageous price. Is that just the setup fee? And can a publisher avoid some of that by designing his own pages instead of having them do the conversion?
11:21 - Mike Joyce: Now, however, I believe you can go directly to Lightning Source. 1st Books adds very little.
11:22 - Mike Joyce: Well, our net cost was only about $800.
11:22 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Royalty? Just a second here -- that's a strange use of that term, and I've seen that misuse over and over again at sites like 1st Books. You are the publisher. They are the printer/distributor. You own the copyright and you may well have authors that you pay royalties to. Whatever this 30% is that they are paying you is not a "royalty." This in fact amounts to their taking a 70% cut of the retail price -- which is obscene for any distributor/printer/retailer.
11:23 - Mike Joyce: Yes, we tried all the biggies first, and a few others.
11:22 - Barbara: Mike, did you go the usual route with trying to get your book published before you went to print on demand?
11:24 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- $800 is not your net cost. That's just what you paid for the setup. You are in fact paying every time you need another copy of your own book. And their 70% cut means that you cannot afford to order a few dozen copies to sell through ordinary bookstores, because with a bookstore/distributor discount of 40-55%, you'd be losing money on every sale.
11:24 - Mike Joyce: That's true about the 70%, however it includes printing and admin expenses. Stiill, it's a rip.
11:26 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- The ripoff is that they are charging you based on the retail price that you set. If they simply charged you a fixed fee per book, you could set your retail price wherever you liked to get a fair profit and to have enough of a margin so you could do business with traditional bookstores.
11:30 - Barbara (Re: 11:27 - Richard Seltzer 'Bob -- are you still having...'): Rich, my computer keeps looking for something. Now I have nothing on my screen.
11:31 - Mike Joyce: I think there are better POD options now.
11:31 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- I've been talking to the folks at GalaxyLibrary about putting some books of mine there. And the whole vocabulary of "royalties" seems to be getting in the way. It's very hard to get a straight answer from them -- to know exactly what I need to do to submit a book, and what it's going to cost me.
11:32 - Richard Seltzer: "I think there are better POD options now." Mike -- what are those better options? What would you do if you had to do it all over again?
11:33 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- When did your book first become available? And what have you had for sales and revenue to date? I believe that your book has been far more successful than most POD books (and 1st Books seems to highlight it on their home page).
11:34 - Mike Joyce: Set up your own pub company and go right to Lightning Source
11:35 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- I have my own publishing company. But what terms does Lightning source offer in that case? How does that differ from going by way of 1st Books?
11:35 - Mike Joyce: They are setting up a print operation in Europe now for that market.Amazon buys directly through Ingram.
11:36 - Mike Joyce: Goofy 1st books won't report until the end of this month for the Quarter, so I don't know. What jerks.
11:37 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- But Amazon lists your book as available in 2-3 weeks. That discourages many customers. To get 24 hour turnaround from Amazon, a small publisher needs to go through their Advantage program, sending them a few copies on consignment. But then Amazon takes a 55% cut. Clearly that isn't feasible if you are giving 70% to your printer.
11:38 - Mike Joyce: Well, I imagine Lightning would just take your pdf file, maybe charge a small fee and put you in the system. They and Ingram are the big players. They make everything possible.
11:38 - Bob Zwick (Re: 11:31 - Richard Seltzer 'Mike -- I've been talking to...'): Richard - I have all the pricing and royalty information from Galaxy. They don't to deal with authors, just publishers. I am on their publisher list.
11:38 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Does Lightning take the 70% cut? Or is it 1st Books? What's the arrangement if you deal directly with Lightning?
11:39 - Mike Joyce: You are right bout the royalty thing. They insist on telling us we are the publisher and responsible for everything, but insist on calling their cut a royalty,
11:39 - Richard Seltzer: Bob -- Part of the problem is distinguishing between "publishers" and "authors". On the Internet, often it's the same person.
11:40 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- You might want to point out to them that you own the copyright, the intellectual property is yours, hence they are not paying you a royalty, rather they are taking an exorbitant discount.
11:41 - Mike Joyce: No, it is 1st books. Amazon charges 16.55 for our book vs 15 at first books. So, a guy like you can use those standard %s and probably get a good idea as to what Lightning charges.
11:44 - Mike Joyce: Yes, they have a website.
11:41 - Barbara: Mike, what else do you do besides the excellent book on demand you published?
11:42 - Richard Seltzer: Bob -- I've corresponded with Thomas Thomas at Ion/GalaxyLibrary for many months now and still haven't been able to decipher their terms. I have lots of books that I'd like to make available POD, but I can't afford high setup costs, and need to be able to price my books so I can sell them through bookstores (online and offline).
11:42 - Bob Zwick: My idea of POD is a print shop that keeps you book image on disk and prints and ships on demand. There should be a setup fee but where does royalties come into play?
11:44 - Richard Seltzer: Bob -- Amen. Royalty does not seem to make sense here. But read the terms for Galaxy -- they play that game too. They want the setup fee and they want a huge chunk of every book sold (I think Galaxy takes 60% [in their terms, they pay you a 40% royalty]).
11:42 - Mike Joyce: Or just give Lightning a call. Plus they plug you into Ingram so any store or dotcom can order from them. Everyone does, libraries, etc.
11:43 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Is there a Web site for Lightning? With clear explanations of their terms?
11:44 - Mike Joyce: Bob, I think Lightning just charges per book by the # of pages. Then, I suppose Ingram gets a distrib. fee.
11:44 - Bob Zwick: Mike are you with Lightning?
11:45 - Mike Joyce: No we're stuck with 1stBooks for now.
11:45 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- You should take a look at Bob's eBookIt program. With it you could make your book available in with audio narration (maybe in both English and Czech?)
11:46 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- It would make sense for the printer to charge per book and by the # of pages and for the distributor to get a cut. It's the role of the sites like 1st Books that mystify me. They seem to take a large cut and I don't see what value they provide (since they actually do no marketing/advertising).
11:47 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- Since you just provided a Word file and 1st Books did a conversion (presumably to PDF for the POD printer), did you have anything to say about the page design and the general layout of the book? and was there a specific charge for that service?
11:49 - Bob Zwick: FYI - I read a horror story about the POD services from the company associated with Amazon. Lost book files and extremely long fullfilment times. Makes we cringe.
11:49 - Barbara: I feeling the whole secret here is distribution. Rich, could you print books the way you did the Lizard of Oz (not hand written, of course) and sell them through Amazon. The fees these other places charge seem to be killers?
11:50 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- What's your experience with 1stBooks/Lightnight re: fulfillment? When I ordered your book from 1stBooks I received my copy (very professionally done) within a week. Is that common?
11:51 - Mike Joyce: Yes, but it's all done through Lightning.
11:52 - Richard Seltzer: Barb -- the temptation of POD is that you shouldn't have to pay a lot of money up front. There's no inventory. Books are only printed when customers order them. Hence a small publisher should be able to keep many more books in print this way -- unless the setup fees and discounts are outrageous (which they seem to be today).
11:54 - Richard Seltzer: Mike -- One other benefit that the 1st Books and GalaxyLibraries offer is that people can opt to buy the same book in electronic form -- with a variety of formats available. Do you know if anyone has bought your book in electronic form? Or have all your sales been POD?
11:54 - Mike Joyce (Re: 11:50 - Richard Seltzer 'Mike -- What's your experience with...'): I would check out what Lightning charges direct. They seem very professional. I spoke with them at the book expo in Chicago this year as a reporter.
11:56 - Mike Joyce: Lightning Print changed its name to Source because it is doing e books now, too.
11:56 - Barbara: Mike, if you had to do the whole process over, what would you do differently?
11:56 - Richard Seltzer: Barb -- good question. Yes, Mike, what would you do?
11:57 - Mike Joyce: I would try Lighning directly.
11:57 - Richard Seltzer: And, Mike, what's the URL for Lightning Print/Source?
11:58 - Mike Joyce: I'll have to email it or you could search. They used to be on Ingram's site.

Wrapup

11:55 - Richard Seltzer: All -- we're getting near the end of the hour. Please post your email address and URL before logging out (by clicking Close). As usual, I'll post an edited transcript in a few days. Check http://www.samizdat.com/chat.html Mike, thanks very much for joining us today and shedding some light on a very confusing area of the publishing business.
11:56 - Bob Zwick: Bob Zwick - bob@cottagemicro.com Author of eBookIt
11:58 - Richard Seltzer: Thanks to all.
11:58 - Barbara: Goodbye. It was an interesting chat.
11:59 - Mike Joyce: Bye.

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