The small amount of negative feedback I’ve received for Meetings with Gurdjieff in Paris 1944 was only that the book was produced as a print-on-demand (POD) volume. So I wanted to address my decision for making the book available through POD rather than offset printing.
As a bibliophile, I do value books with high production values: leather or cloth bound, dust jacket, sewn binding, heavy weight acid-free paper, premium ink, gilded edges, bookmarks, even scented inks. You could easily spend $100-300 dollars on a new top quality book produced using the traditional offset printing process.
So when the translation of Meetings 1944 was completed, I researched my options for publishing. I first looked at offset printing.
Pros of Offset Printing
- Potential for higher production values, as enumerated previously.
- Higher potential collectible value
Cons of Offset Printing
- Upfront cost
- Stock
- Distribution
- Waste
- Higher price
The price of clothbound books doesn’t add much to the cost to produce them ($2/book), but without a stamped cover, the book is not identifiable, and stamped covers do add more to the cost, depending on the size of the stamp ($3-$9/book).
A problem with clothbound books is that they tend to become soiled easily with handling and even in storage. To alleviate this problem requires a dust jacket, which also adds to the cost ($4/book).
Added to production cost is shipping cost. At a small volume (125 copies), the total typical upfront cost is $2935, or $23.48 per book, for a book that I do not know would sell.
Had I taken this approach, I would also need to store the books somewhere. I live in a fairly tiny house with no garage, which makes storing them at home impractical.
Then I would need to find a way to take orders and distribute the books. While shipping books in the US would not be too costly, international shipping would be prohibitively high.
That is of course assuming they would sell at all. Had they not sold, I would be sitting on a pile of wasted dead trees.
So when it came to weighing higher production values and potential collectibility for an offset press volume, I decided that the cost would be too high for myself and the potential buyer, and I began to look for other options.
Pros of POD
- No upfront cost
- No stock costs
- Wide distribution
- No waste
- Lower price
Cons of POD
- Limited cover options
- Not as collectible
POD book production has limited options. While not clothbound, perfect bound hardcover volumes are sturdy and do not require dust jackets. They are the same quality you find in most textbooks and are as durable as clothbound books if they are not too large.
Paper and ink options were identical to offset printing services, so I selected a 70# paperweight acid-free paper, what you find in most regular offset printed books of this kind.
I evaluated several POD services, but for the purposes of lower cost to the buyer and wider distribution, I chose to use Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Both services take a cut for distributing books, but they did give me the opportunity to make the book widely available in many more countries than if I had handled the distribution on my own.
So using POD, I would have no upfront cost, no need to stock inventory, no need to manage distribution, no waste, and I would be able to sell it at a lower price and distribute it more widely than if I had used offset press.
Final Thoughts
While POD was the most practical option, if there is sufficient interest in a premium volume of Meetings with Gurdjieff in Paris 1944, or any other books published by Solis Scriptorium LLC, I will consider using an offset press to produce small quantities of these books and make them available at a higher price than POD volumes.