Chaudywogbaaga

I’ve published seven POD (Print On Demand) books. I really enjoy the process, I really like getting a professionally bound book in the mail that I made myself. The problem that I see is that POD does not transition from hobby to income as you would expect. There is very little way for a POD book to grab people’s attention like it could on a bookstore shelf. Sure there are search engines that could somehow get people to find your book but most people don’t buy a book by just looking at it on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles website. They often hear about a book from a friend and go out and look for it. This is not what POD was supposed to be. The model was, you make your book, post it online and then people would stumble across it and every once in a while they would buy it.

What it comes down to is that a book has to be in people’s hands. You have to start out with a stock of them to sell on a bookshelf and then the people that initially buy them tell their friends then those friends go searching for it. POD printers are recognizing that by offering volume discounts, something they thought unnecessary before.

This was originally the big draw to POD. You didn’t have to buy a thousand books to get your book published. Now POD printers offer to print you a hundred books at a slight discount but you couldn’t sell them competitively in a bookstore because of the higher cost of POD printing. In essence you have to give some books away or find a physical venue to sell them at. Then maybe the critical mass of word of mouth will get people buying.

Now to test that theory out!