Print on demand
[4] In 1966, Frederik Pohl discussed in Galaxy Science Fiction "a proposal for high-speed facsimile machines which would produce a book to your order, anywhere in the world".
POD has other business benefits besides lesser costs (for small jobs): These advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books and prints and can result in increased choice for consumers.
The introduction of ultraviolet-curable inks and media for large-format inkjet printers has allowed artists, photographers and owners of image collections to take advantage of print on demand.
POD creates a new category of publishing (or printing) company that offers services, usually for a fee, directly to authors who wish to self-publish.
These services generally include printing and shipping each individual book ordered, handling royalties, and getting listings in online bookstores.
Other services may also be available, including formatting, proofreading, and editing, but such companies typically do not spend money for marketing, unlike conventional publishers.
A class of companies have chosen to be "author-agnostic", attempting to serve a broad mass-market of ordinary citizens who may want to express, record and print keepsake copies of memories and personal writing (diaries, travelogues, wedding journals, baby books, family reunion reports etc.).
The management of copyrights and royalties is often less important for this market, as the books themselves have a small clientele (close family and friends, for instance).
Some companies apply this method to a greater volume of creative work (primarily text, as typed in personal weblogs) and include the capability to embed photographs and other media.
Others assume the role of an infrastructure service provider, allowing any partner website to use its pre-designed payment and printing functions.
Print on demand can be used to reduce risk when dealing with "surge" publications that are expected to have large sales but a brief sales life (such as biographies of minor celebrities, or event tie-ins): these publications represent good profitability but also great risk owing to the danger of inadvertently printing many more copies than are necessary, and the associated costs of maintaining excess inventory or pulping.
In 1999, the Times Literary Supplement carried an article entitled "A Very Short Run", in which author Andrew Malcolm argued that under the rights-reversion clauses of older, pre-PoD contracts, copyrights would legally revert to their authors if their books were printed on demand rather than re-lithographed, and he envisaged a test case being successfully fought on this aspect.
