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Print on demand (POD), sometimes mistakenly referred to as publish on demand, is a printing technology employed by publishers in which new copies of a book (or other document) are not printed until after an order for them has been received. more...

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"Print on Demand" developed only after the development of digital printing, because of the practical and economic difficulties of printing single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress or offset printing.

Print on Demand is also a trademark of Cygnus Business Media, and a business model. Due to the minimal financial investment required, POD has become associated with self-publishing and vanity presses.

Many traditional small presses have replaced their traditional printing equipment with POD equipment or contract their printing out to POD service providers, and many university presses and other academic publishers use POD services to maintain a large backlist while other academic presses use POD exclusively. Larger presses may use POD in special circumstances, such as reprinting older titles that had been out of print or doing test marketing.

Book publishing through POD

Print on demand with digital technology is used as a way of printing items for a fixed cost per copy, irrespective of the size of the order. While the unit price of each physical copy printed is higher than with offset printing, when setup costs are taken into account digital print on demand provides lower per unit costs for very small print runs than offset printing methods.

While the unit cost of a book or print produced using POD is usually higher than one produced as part of a longer print run, POD does bring some key business benefits: 1) large inventories of a book or print do not need to be kept in stock, 2) the technical set-up is usually quicker and less expensive than for offset printing and 3) there is little or no waste from unsold products. These advantages reduce the risks associated with publishing books and prints and can lead to increased choice for consumers. However, the reduced risks for the publisher can also mean that quality control is less rigorous than usual.

Other publishing through POD

Digital technology is ideally suited to publish small print runs of posters (often as a single copy) as and when they are needed. The introduction of UV-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. The National Gallery, London installed a print on demand system using HP printers and technology in their shop in July 2003. The system increased the number of images available as prints from 60 to 2,500 (almost all of the gallery's permanent collection).

Read more at Wikipedia.org