The Business: Print On Demand & Why I Like Its Future

This is a more speculative post.

I have always felt that one of the most fortunate individuals in the world was the inventor of the paperclip. How things worked before and after its adoption seems small, but any veteran bureaucrat--public or private--that remembers that transition will tell you how things changed.

We have, today, another series of major changes going on.

Since a lot of you are authors, artists, technical writers, publishers, game designers/publishers, etc. then I will presume that you are familiar with Print On Demand technology and how that technology allowed Amazon to become a publishing juggernaut overnight.

Consider this: if you are looking for a long-term industrial investment, then consider investing in the printing operations that cater to satisfying Print On Demand business operations, especially in areas heretofore unserved or illserved yet possessed of a significant population of people who deal in physical published material on a regular basis.

I do not think that digital publishing will wholly erase physical literature. I do not think it will reduce physical literature to a rump state. Instead, I think it will settle into a medium favoring periodicals and early-edition publications while archival, complete edition, and long-tail publishing will shift to favor physical product as it does not rely on highly fragile infrastructure to be useful. In particular, I think print sales will become a measure of enduring success; readers will want physical copies to show off, keep as backups, as loaners, etc. to spread the word or ensure they own a copy that can't be erased at the flip of a switch.

In short, the growth of this business is in the efforts to shorten the distance between purchaser and producer. Amazon already realizes this, which is why they are already pursuing this strategy; Australia recently had a local POD operation incorporated into Amazon's POD distribution infrastructure specifically to reduce operational costs in that country to Australian customers. Other areas of the world will follow as conditions allow for it.

We are seeing that even among younger audiences, there remains a Revealed Preference for physical product given certain use cases. Unlinking the need for regular, and massive, print runs for smaller products is a godsend that I think drove, continues to drive, and will drive on growth of POD over the rest of my lifetime until the established printing business model is reduced to only the most massive of mass market business operations- yes, including comics worldwide, and sooner than later.

Of course, I also wonder if I'm late to the party here and this sort of thing is well past the point where anyone that isn't either independently wealth or an institutional actor can do this sort of thing.