At the beginning of an earlier millennium, books were, of course, only available on demand hand-crafted, the ultimate custom product. In the sixteenth century Gutenberg and Caxton would industrialise book production on business principles that are still familiar today: risk, capital and economies of scale. Today's book business may still be based on these principles, but new printing technology is set to challenge them in a quite fundamental way. For some titles, the millennial wheel is about to come full circle, with books being made one at a time, only as and when required.
Print-on-demand (making one book at a time, only when an order has been received) and ultra short-run reprinting (making tiny quantities - 20 and fewer - for stockholding) have benefited from a coincidence of changes in printing technology, developments in book retailing and the growth of the internet. This new technology is digital printing, using laser processes similar to those used by desktop printers, substituting toner for ink. Digital printers are reliable, fast and relatively inexpensive. For the first time, technology can make very small reprints of slow-selling titles economically viable. Many in the business now believe that declaring a title out of print will in future be based on choice rather than economic necessity.
Book sales continue to grow at approximately 2% a year. The chain superstores discovered a simple truth. The greater the range of titles offered, the greater the sales. Critical to this growth has been the serendipity of 'found' sales - when the book buyer comes in for one book and leaves with three. Superstores replace cramped uniformity with diversity - and the internet stores multiply the choices to every title available. Previously hard-to-find backlist is taking an increasing share of total sales away from 'top-twenty' bestsellers. Some trade houses are actually considering abandoning their concentration on the blockbuster in favour of more titles, lower risk and greater diversity.
The internet changes everything. For an academic publisher like Cambridge, committed to keeping its books available as long as possible, it has always been a problem to reconcile a very low level of continuing demand with economic practicality. Over 5,000 of our 13,500 academic titles sell fewer than 50 copies a year. There is no realistic prospect of such slow-selling titles being stocked by any more than a handful of bookshops worldwide. And yet such titles can have the same weight of web presence and marketing as more popular titles, and many are actually more susceptible to being located by internet searches. What is true for Cambridge is perhaps more true for general publishers. Where would you find a bookshop carrying the complete in-print work of D. H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy?
Every title that can be kept going represents an additional opportunity for publishers, their authors and booksellers, and a bonus for the book buyers they serve. Today we have affordable technology to make the books; we have superstores to stock them; and the internet can help our readers track them down. Barnes & Noble reckon that there are 1.3 million titles in print, and that some 90,000 are put out of print every year. Random House has a discontinued backlist of about 50,000 titles, Cambridge perhaps half that (or more, should we take things back to 1584...).
No wonder then that the book trade is gearing up to massive investments in instant printing, by publishers, by wholesalers, and by booksellers actually in their shops - with digital files delivered over the web. This can all be quite invisible to the reader, whose interest has only ever been in whether the book could be supplied or not.
One of the main concerns about digital printing has been production quality. Reproduction from an original digital file can result in legibility, sharpness and resolution every bit as good as non-digital offset lithography. For older titles, however, the creation of a digital file will only be possible by scanning in a print copy, producing a result that will not entirely match the original. For some, digital reprinting won't be practicable - for example, if there are many photographs or colour. The most expensive part of short-run printing can be the binding and covers. Bindings will often be unsewn, and hardbacks, often without jackets, may have square rather than rounded spines. Many publishers have opted for simplified standard short-run cover designs that may be one colour or unlaminated.
Authors need to understand that short-run incarnations of their work, for now at least, will probably look different. Wise authors, however, recognise that today's occasionally inelegant 'facsimiles' are just intermediate place-holders, bridging a short hiatus before the march of technology allows digital reprints to be produced which are indistinguishable in quality and finish from the originals. Any book discontinued by its publisher, rather than kept going by short-run, is far less likely in the future to be resurrected when conditions allow.
The low cost of entry has encouraged a number of new publishers, many of them internet start-ups with no book trade experience, to offer on-demand services to publishers and authors. For many, the race to digitise a critical mass of content at almost any cost is the main driver. If authors are not to find themselves in strange company, with muddy illustrations, questionable livery, deprived of consultation over terms, prices, or marketing, they would be advised to consider their options carefully before signing away any rights. Even in cases where rights have reverted, it may well make sense to enquire whether there are plans for resurrection at the original house. Continuing a trusted and responsible author-publisher relationship under a consistent and reputable imprint will, as it always did, count for a good deal in maintaining or restoring sales.
Few question that the right to sell an on-demand or short-run book is anything other than a primary right. The traditional supply chain (publisher pays for printer to make book; publisher distributes to retailer or direct to consumer) remains in place even if the 'printer' is a wholesaler or bookseller. A book still needs to be physically manufactured, and things balance out for the publisher, saving on risk, investment and stockholding, but losing on a higher unit production cost. The question does not arise, as it undoubtedly does with electronic books (ebooks) of there being two formats with two or more 'publishers', which cannot but be in direct competition, and with the one potentially cannibalising the other. Generally speaking, royalty rates for on-demand are remaining the same as for any other kind of reprint.
Concerns have been expressed about the notion that the on-demand future, stretching forward to infinity, is a one-sided one, loaded in favour of the publisher. Such concerns are real and need to be explored. The benefits to academic and specialist authors are clear-cut. They will value the publisher's implied commitment to scholarly dissemination and few will be too concerned about reduced production values or, possibly, higher prices. General and trade authors may be less easily persuaded.
The concerns of most general authors have centred on the definition of 'in print' and 'available for sale'. The industry standard contract allows for the return of rights to the author when the work goes out of print. Self-evidently, with on-demand printing offering the prospect of 'eternal life', any such reversion may be deferred indefinitely. New definitions, which will protect both publisher and author interests, are required. A foretaste of the problem has been seen over the last few years, with nimbler, just-in-time print-runs - a consequence of digital printing, but largely unconnected with true on-demand. How, in such cases, should publishers fairly interpret any 'reduced printing' clause, under which the royalty percentage is supposed to be reduced for small reprints?
Authors will probably be comfortable about a transition to on-demand at some 'reasonable' point in the title's life when sales have dropped to a low level (which may be a few hundred copies a year for a trade title which has sold thousands; or may be only a handful of sales in the case of a specialist title). But what if publishers start to bring the transition forward? An academic publisher might decide to print only sufficient copies to meet advance subscription needs, switching to overnight on-demand manufacture after three months or so. That may be an issue if the short-run product is inferior in production quality, but is that a legitimate concern? Does it continue to be a legitimate concern when the stock is indistinguishable in production values - as it surely will be within a year or so from now?
Is a book 'in print and available' if - even on the day of publication - the publisher is carrying no physical inventory, but simply warrants that any likely demand for copies can be met? In a perverse way, the publisher might even be guaranteeing a better service, by the implicit elimination of the risk of ever going out of stock. Enhanced marketing advantages become possible too - dynamic jacket blurbs, incorporating up-to-the-minute reviews.
Many publishers have internal policies determining at what level of sales they are prepared to revert rights. This may be measured by setting a minimum requirement of sales (or of remaining stock) in each of a consecutive series of accounting periods. Many follow the Society's guidelines and incorporate such stipulations in their contracts. Such agreements will surely need to be reconsidered in the light of the new technology. Others would argue that the publisher, having taken the initial risk, made the investment, professionally edited, marketed and publicised the title, has the continuing right to benefit as long as there is some benefit to be had. There is an engaging irony in all this. Authors have always felt let down and aggrieved when their books are discontinued by their publishers. All of a sudden, publishers hear complaints that print-on-demand represents a conspiracy to keep books in print against authors' better interests.
The strength of any such argument depends on the likelihood that there is, out there somewhere, another publisher prepared to re-publish the book, offer the author better terms, and - above all - to re-promote and market it afresh. This in the context of an industry which can never find sufficient resources to publicise new titles, and spends almost nothing on backlist marketing of even those titles it does keep available. The percentage of titles thus undervalued by their publishers, yet nevertheless susceptible to genuine re-issue, must be vanishingly small. Which perhaps takes this discussion full circle. If a book has enough life left in it to sustain an on-demand or ultra-short-run future, why would a publisher discontinue it? And why should an author wish to take it to another house or to an internet start-up for a more-or-less identical service?
As for the future of any industry standard publishing agreement, it is unlikely to incorporate anything other than the vaguest language redefining what is meant by 'in-print and available'. Publishers will still want wherever possible to retain both print and e-rights while they have copies available to sell, whether on-demand or from inventory. The way forward may be for more agreements, for print and e-rights alike, to be for fixed, renewable terms, subject to mutual renegotiation. In an electronic world of network downloads, hand-helds and the new Microsoft Reader software, the safeguarding of author interests will only grow in significance. By and large, print-on-demand represents a marriage of print technology and book trade developments that can only work in the interests of greater sales - to the benefit of publishers, booksellers, authors and readers alike.
Michael Holdsworth is Press Business Development Director, Cambridge University Press.
Click for An Ultra Short Run (print-on-demand and authors' contracts), for OUP's & CUP's licensed American On-Demand website Lightningsource.com, for AKME's collated list of OUP and CUP printed-on-demand authors, titles and notes, or for p.o.d. news.