Growth on Demand

A. Perhaps you're putting more books out-of-print than is necessary, due to the economic order quantities (EOQ) required for offset reprinting. A keep-in-print program using short-run digital book manufacturing allows you to reap returns from up-front plant and marketing investments for the book's full life, without adding staff or occupying warehouse space.

Q. We are experiencing high bookstore returns on many of our academic titles as a result of poor sell-through, presumably due to a lack of perceived value. How can digital book manufacturing solve this problem?

A. Digital printing technologies offer attractive short-run economies that let you operate with more conservative production forecasts. Additionally, there are custom publishing Web services being offered that make extensive use of variable data technology. When coupled with digital printing, this allows end users (professors) to go to your Web site, customize and personalize a title's content to students' needs, thereby offering more value to the buyer. Experience shows custom publishing dramatically improves bookstore sell-through whenever it's used.

Q. We frequently revise our books, manuals and directories due to changing content in the subject areas we cover. This results in excess inventory and development costs that are never fully recovered. Can short-run digital book manufacturing help us create up-to-date books at a profit?

A. Changing content is the norm in technical, legal and business subjects. Using other printing means, publishers house excess inventory that gets built into the book's price. Short-run digital book production allows a revolutionary alternative: Up-to-the-minute revisions with little or no inventory obsolescence. Short-run digital books are price competitive with offset printed book run lengths of 750 or more.

Q. Demand for many of our titles is unpredictable due to the nature of the content, or lack of market data. How can we use short-run digital book manufacturing to reduce the financial risk associated with unpredictable markets?