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Reviving Classics Backlist with POD
The MIT Press and Edwards Brothers launch innovative print-on-demand program
It's a perennial problem for book publishers, and a source of anxiety for authors: how to keep books in print after their sales have fallen below the point where it is financially feasible to reprint them in quantity and keep them as inventory. The promise of print-on-demand is to eliminate this dilemma, but while the dream is an old one, the technology is just now beginning to come into its own.More so than their counterparts in commercial publishing, university presses have a commitment to keeping their titles in print for permanent access by scholars and researchers -- particularly important in an era of diminished library budgets. Older technical and scientific works, for instance, can be critically important to current research. Scholars in the humanities and social sciences likewise need access to earlier work on which their own will build. But keeping titles in print indefinitely is costly and presents a major challenge for nonprofit university presses, whose budgets are small.
The MIT Press has just launched a print-on-demand program that they believe is a model in the university press world. Bringing together the concerted efforts of The MIT Press, Edwards Brothers printers in Ann Arbor, MI, The Hewlett-Packard Company, and R.R. Donnelly printers in Allentown, PA, this program will enable The MIT Press to bring back out-of-print books, many of which have been unavailable for years, in single or multiple copies, and only as there is demand for them. There will be no need to keep any inventory on hand. Yet the ordering, production, and fulfillment are speedy, cost-efficient, and highly streamlined. The books themselves are attractive paperbacks, comparable to others on the market.
The MIT Press Classics Series will make available 1750 previously out-of-print titles from The Press's backlist. Unlike the short run programs with which some publishers are experimenting, this is a true print-on-demand program with an innovative and uniquely streamlined production and fulfillment model. Beginning April 2003 customers (individuals, retailers, and wholesalers) can order from an initial list of more than 250 Classics Series titles; the list will include 1750 titles by the end of 2003. Orders can be placed by phone, fax, email, or the web (http://mitpress.mit.edu/Classics), and are routed directly to Edwards Brothers in Ann Arbor, MI for production and fulfillment. U.S. customers are promised books within 7 business days.
Here's how it works. The MIT Press has provided to Edwards Brothers PDF files of Classics Series titles, which were originally scanned for The Press overseas and then converted to print-quality PDFs by the Hewlett-Packard Company using a process developed by HP and The MIT Press. R.R. Donnelly/Allentown Digital Services pre-flighted the files (checking fonts, image resolution, and other issues to ensure the quality of the finished book), merged the metadata (information required for the electronic transaction, including author, title, ISBN, unit price, and type of file), and delivered final text and cover files, ready for POD, to Edwards Brothers. MIT Press Classics titles have an elegant black cover design that is standard across the series; but future MIT Press titles slated for the POD program will retain their original cover designs. Edwards Brothers stores both text and cover files awaiting orders.
Using an electronic data interchange (EDI) system, The MIT Press sends orders for Classics Series (and eventually other o/p) titles to Edwards Brothers. Within 48 hours of the order, EB prints, binds, packages and ships the books, entirely bypassing the Press's warehouse. Printing is done with state-of-the-art Xerox digital equipment. Packaging and labeling replicate The Press's own; and a variety of express shipping options are available. According to Edwards Brothers' Vice President of Sales and Marketing Joe Thomson, "This cutting edge business model design and variable cost-free transaction process has been talked about for years, and is finally a reality. I am unaware of any other publisher/printer relationship with EDI linked systems that provides such transparency to end-users."
A confluence of factors, including the maturing of POD and EDI technologies, has made this program possible. "The MIT Press has wanted to offer POD service to its customers for a number of years," says MIT Press Production Manager, Terry Lamoureux, who began investigating the options in early 1990s. But there were many barriers, most of them technical, to obtaining high quality on-demand books at a reasonable price. "This technology is just beginning to come into its own," says Lamoureux, "and we believe the MIT-EB program is among the most streamlined and efficient of its kind."
The program will allow The Press to offer more titles to its customers without having to keep all of these books in inventory. According to MIT Press Marketing Director Vicki Lepine, "Titles that have been out of print for years can now make a comeback in the MIT Classics Series, and thanks to POD, we won't have to worry if these comebacks are modest ones. Ultimately, the goal is for all MIT Press books to be available to customers who may want them, even if their sales have fallen below the point at which we could afford to print and warehouse them conventionally."
Titles scheduled for initial release in the MIT Press Classics Series this April include such diverse gems as War: Patterns of Conflict by Richard E. Barringer and Robert K. Ramers (1972); Preventing a Biological Arms Race edited by Susan Wright (1991); A Century of DNA: A History of the Discovery of the Structure and Function the Genetic Substance by Franklin H. Portugal and Jack S. Cohen (1977); The Organization of Learning by Charles R. Gallistel (1990); Revolutionary Struggle Vol. 1: Selected Works of Fidel Castro (1947-1958) edited by Rolando Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes (1974); Lived-In Architecture: Le Corbusier's Pessac Revisited by Philippe Boudon and Gerald Onn (1979); and Energy and Development: A Case Study by William W. Seifert, Mohammed A. Bakr, and M. Ali Kettani (1973).