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PRINT ON-DEMAND (POD)
In today's competitive business environment success can come down to how well you manage your stock and how hard your capital is working. This applies as much to printing as to anything so whether you are publisher relying on sales of your printed material for your business or a manufacturer who simply needs manuals to go out with different products you need to get the numbers right. Nobody can afford to have warehouses full of print, equally you do not want to lose a sale while you are waiting for stock. So do you publish just-in-time or just-in-case. Print on-demand (POD) is a concept that has developed hand-in-hand with digital printing over the last ten years and can now be used successfully in a wide range of different publishing environments ranging from traditional book publishers through to training organisations (course materials), manufacturers (product manuals) and education (course notes).
Business Problem
Deciding how many copies to print of anything is always a difficult decision and when it comes to reprint quantities it's even worse. Will it continue to sell? How much stock should we hold? Do we let it go out of print? These are daily publishing dilemmas: some are unique to traditional publilshing while others are common to all users of printing.
1. You have thousands of backlist titles but you don't want to fill your warehouse with stock that moves slowly.
2. You produce specialist titles with niche markets and printing 500 copies because that's the minimum viable quantity' makes no sense.
3. The product specifications are changing so fast the manuals cannot keep up
4. The manuals have nearly run out but are we going to continue to sell this product.
5. We need to produce professional training notes but the courses vary too much to just have one lot.
6. We need to prepare the course literature but we don't know how many students we are going to have yet.
The Solution
Butler and Tanner's Print on-demand (POD) solution can remove the risk from the decision making process that every publisher has to go through allowing you to order exactly what you need, safe in the knowledge that you can have instant reprints that are not subject to the usual start-up penalties associated with conventional manufacturing.
By holding your assets digitally they can be put into production instantly and with digital presses needing no plates, no make-ready and producing already collated material production times are measured in minutes not weeks.
Butler and Tanner will work with you to develop an on-line ordering system that will take full advantage of this manufacturing ability so that all of your print requirements can benefit from POD.
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Business benefits
Increased sales and marketing effectiveness can be realised through:
Better capital utilisation
Reduce material stored in warehouses
Only print what you need
Most cost-effective method of production
For mono digital can be cost-effective up to 2,000 copies
For colour digital can be cost-effective up to 1,000 copies
No lost sales
Fulfil back-list orders instantly
Manuals can be manufactured on-demand
Course notes for additional students can easily be produced
Exploit niche markets
Publish specialist material with high value to a small number of people
Customise existing data to appeal to market segment
Easily change languages and product specifications
Major cost savings can be realised through:
No storage required
Stock warehouse is replaced with a digital warehouse
Reduced administration
Automated ordering and production system minimises administration.
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Types of business that will benefit
Any business that has uncertain demand for their product and printing is an important component of the sale. In particular:
· publishers
· manufacturers
· training organisations
· education
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