With the digitisation of the written word – a process that has been honed over the past 60 or so years – has come the benefit of compression. Where once a huge warehouse would be required to store a publisher’s catalogue, now whole libraries can be held on a hard drive, not much bigger than a book itself.

And the latest developments in this sector mean that any book on that hard drive can be printed in any run length, from one to a million – true books-on-demand (BOD) production has arrived.

BOD could be the printed book’s lifeline in the new digital age. Publishers are embracing it and so is the public. It means the former can slash its warehousing costs and offer a broader, more flexible range, while the latter has access to a vast library of titles, both in and out of print.

However, there are some in the industry who do not believe the ultra-low run on-demand book market will ever be commercially viable for any but the biggest printing operations. Meanwhile, some in the publishing trade believe that BOD may already have been superseded in the public’s eyes by e-books. The warehouses have already gone digital, what remains to be seen is whether BOD will help prevent books from going the same way.

Little and often
BOD first emerged around 10 years ago when publishers, stung by falling demand and increasing competition, started opting to take a ‘little and often’ approach to printing. First runs of more than 100,000 were costly, particularly if the end-result failed to live up to expectations and a significant chunk of it had to be warehoused or, worse, pulped. So publishers turned to shorter runs; 20,000 for a first run, for example, followed by further runs as and when required. This model is ubiquitous in today’s market for a lead title, according to Clays managing director Kate McFarlan.

"A lead title with sales of 100,000 copies would now almost always be made up of between five and 15 print runs, all printed in 48-72 hours and delivered direct to the retailer," she explains.

As digital print technology started to break into the mainstream, BOD became more sophisticated. The digital machines became more reliable, the quality got better, the cost-point, at which digital was viable, got into higher numbers and the workflow systems became more intelligent. This all meant that, in the past few years, what the purists would call ‘true’ print-on demand has become a reality.

BOD can be split into two distinct markets: single-copy printing and ‘top-up’ printing. The latter is where the publisher is able to keep a lower stock of titles that sell consistently, but perhaps not in high numbers, and to ‘top up’ this small stock with short runs as needed.

"What digital has brought is the ability to take the ‘little and often’ model adopted for the lead titles even further," explains McFarlan. "Two years ago, for a title with a small but ongoing demand, the publisher would have held, say, 3,000 copies in stock. Now they can hold just 60, and when the level dips below a certain level, we automatically top it up. It’s quick, it’s efficient and it reduces storage and costs."

To work, this model requires rock solid performance from the digital kit. The publisher is sacrificing the security of a large store of copies on the basis that the digital presses can produce the titles cost-effectively, accurately and quickly. If the kit fails, the quality is poor or production is too slow, the model falls apart.

"For auto-replenishment – the top-up model – to work, the whole operation has to be as efficient as possible," explains Dino Bishop, CPI marketing and communications manager. "Technology is the key to making that happen."

Academic and technical book printer Bell & Bain spotted the technology requirement for efficient print runs of between 50 and 500 earlier than most and became the first company in the world to install a Muller Martini SigmaLine reel-to-book system back in 2005. It has proved a valuable investment.

"Most of our contemporaries print first, then fold, collate, bind and trim offline," explains David Stewart, Bell & Bain sales director. "Using the SigmaLine with an Océ 9210, we manufacture books from a web, we print both sides of the paper, fold it, collate it, bind it, three-knife-trim it – all in one continuous process. We can say with some confidence that this is the most efficient, cost-effective method of producing a digital book in the UK."

While kit is certainly paramount for the top-up model, McFarlan says workflow is just as important. At Clays, the Kodak Prinergy system is in operation, which she says offers flexibility and speed. The book files can be found, processed and sent to the printer without too much human intervention, meaning that when an order comes in, it is on the press very quickly.

"BOD requires some adjustment of workflows, but once you do that, the process is pretty much people-free," she explains. "A good workflow that enables a cost-effective model that gives flexibility to send the files to conventional or digital, enabling reaction to drop or rise in demand, gives publishers the confidence to operate in this way."

The flexibility of press technology is an important point: BOD is not necessarily a digital-only area, litho is still part of the model. Clays operates conventional presses for BOD work, while CPI’s Bishop raves about the speed the company’s Speedmaster XL 75 enables for the top-up model. 

That said, Bishop also reveals that CPI will, "in the next 12 months", be bringing a version of its Quantum digital book printing system to the UK. The original version, a combination of an HP T300 inkjet web press, a folding and finishing module specially designed by Magnum/Ultimate and an Acora binding line from Muller Martini, is currently operating at one of the company’s French sites, but Bishop says technology has progressed since that installation so the UK version won’t necessarily follow the same configuration.

Further falls
This investment suggests an expected further dip in run lengths, away from where litho is the most cost-efficient option, and perhaps signals the increasing effectiveness of top-up BOD.

But how the books are printed is only half the story. BOD requires book printers to get involved much deeper in the supply chain to ensure the speed of the service. This means integrated ordering platforms and logistics investments, as well as a much closer relationship with the publishers themselves.

These things come into focus when the other side of BOD, single-copy printing, is in the frame. This is where a customer can order one of a publisher’s selected titles, the printer runs off a single copy of that title and it is then delivered direct to the customer within a very short time-frame. The scope for publishers is huge; to make a book available, all they need to do is provide the printer with the digital file, and millions of digital files can be stored cheaply and compactly. This means that the consumer now has access to a far larger library of titles, including out-of-print titles, and so, unsurprisingly, single-copy BOD is growing.

"HarperCollins now has a very successful single-copy BOD programme," reveals Vicky Price, group inventory director at HarperCollins. "The number of titles has grown 10-fold over the past 18 months. We are seeing fantastic sales and it allows us to offer a wider number of titles."

But to compete against a downloadable e-book effectively, these printed books have to be in the consumer’s hands as soon as humanly possible. Obviously, a printed book is never going to compete with the download speed of an e-book, but delivery times are improving, according to Clay’s McFarlan.

"At present we can guarantee a 48-hour service," she says. "But we will get faster. It will reach the point where the process will be 24 hours as the technology advances."

Working together
Key to that speed bump will be further integration with publishers. Bishop says CPI has already invested heavily in its logistics operations as well as integrating ordering through Electronic Data Interface (EDI), which automatically populates orders from the publisher onto the CPI order book. Clays runs something similar.

"The publisher will decide which titles they wish to work on a print-on-demand model. We hold the files for those books, so if they receive an order, the electronic workflow pushes that order to us and we print it and then send it directly to the customer’s home," says McFarlan.

While this system, where publishers and printers work together to offset the impact of shorter run lengths by doing more single-copy prints, all sounds great in principle, whether it’s a commercially viable model for the printer is debatable. On the economic side of things, Bell & Bain’s Stewart has his doubts.

"I don’t know how anyone can make money from doing a single copy," he says. "We can’t see how they can make it work financially. In order to be cost-effective, you’d have to be producing 400 single copies a day. You’d have to batch them together in one particular size so they don’t have to reset, and you’d have to use one single set paper – it would be very restrictive."

It’s true that investing in the capability to print single copies is an expensive business, on top of which you need clients with enough single-copy work to make it worth while. It would seem likely, therefore, that single-copy BOD will be the preserve of the larger firms that can afford the hefty investment and have the work level to warrant it.

That said, some believe that this form of BOD has already been eclipsed by the growth of e-books, facilitated by the rise in tablet computers. The rapid rise of e-books was underlined in January this year, when Amazon announced that it had sold more Kindle e-books than traditional paperbacks in the US.

The advantages of digital books are obvious. An e-book can be downloaded in a matter of seconds and can cost significantly less (see box) than a print edition – although obviously a digital reading platform also has to be bought. So BOD faces an uphill challenge against its new, digitised rival, which offers a much quicker and cheaper service. Hence, Alison Kennedy, production and distribution director for children’s book publisher Egmont, struggles to see where BOD fits in, at least for her own market.

"A few years ago, BOD was ‘the next big thing’, followed by personalised BOD, which continues to have some success for us because children love to star in stories with their favourite characters," she explains. "But now, BOD has been overtaken by e-books, which have far more connectivity to a much broader audience."

As Kennedy says, BOD’s fight against digital is a difficult one, but there is evidence that it can hold its own. Indeed, at the same time that Amazon was selling millions of e-books, it also saw a rise in paperback sales. This suggests that, despite the competition, or perhaps because of it, the desire for printed books is still very much alive. In addition, you have the likes of HarperCollins expanding its BOD programme and printers investing huge amounts on BOD kit – both of which suggests the BOD offering is a sustainable and popular service offering. 

And the good news for print is that BOD is only at the start of its development. The digital processes will get quicker and more efficient as the technology develops, while the model is forcing publishers and printers into closer relationships that are opening up ever more exciting ways to provide the printed books service for which the demand is still very much alive.

Yes, e-books are a threat, but BOD is an effective weapon against that threat, bringing the wide title choice e-books provide into the printed book domain, while offering the physical and tangible product that e-books just can’t match.

FORMAT RIVALS
The price difference between buying an e-book and a paperback is quite significant, as these Amazon top-five lists reveal

Amazon’s top-five e-books
1 The Basement: Stephen Leather, 71p
2 The Hanging Shed: Gordon Ferris, £1
3 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(Millennium Trilogy): Stieg Larsson, £2.74
4 Hard Landing: The First Spider Shepherd Thriller:
Stephen Leather, 49p
5 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
(Millennium Trilogy): Stieg Larsson, £2.44

Amazon’s top-five paperbacks
1 Room Emma Donoghue, £3.58
2 One Day David Nicholls, £3.99
3 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry, £4.87
4 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro, £4.49
5 The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance:
Edmund de Waal, £5.39

All information as of Friday 25 February