on Indie Kids Books:
Should you print your full color picture books overseas or print-on-demand (POD).
Let’s take a hard look at numbers. Yes, math. As a small business, you must keep track of your cost-of-goods! In the end, it’s all about balancing profits with risks.
First, some terms.
Offset printing means that the book is printed on a large printing press that produces the highest standard of quality. The books are then bound, and shipped to a warehouse until they are sent to the distributor for sales and fulfillment.
Print-on-demand means that you book lives as a digital file on a printer’s server until someone orders the book. Then, it is printed and drop-shipped directly to the customer. KDP, Ingram Spark, and Lulu are the biggest POD printers. NOTE: You are the publisher! They are merely your printers.
The question is which method is the most profitable. To understand that, we need to look at the cost to deliver a finished book to the customer.
Thanks for this article, Darcy and Chris. It raises good questions about managing the process oneself for a better quality and less expensive product or letting KDP and its POD system do most of the lifting. I really wish KDP had better options for hardcovers.
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