Print-on-demand comes to book trade?
On the BBC’s Today programme this morning, business reporter Greg Wood interviewed Neill Denny, editor in chief of the Bookseller about “print-on-demand”.
New technology allows book stores to print a single copy of a book for a customer. I don’t suppose this is ever going to happen for the latest Harry Potter or Bridget Jones, but this is a business where the large range of published titles makes carrying even single copies of low-volume books difficult.
This is a classic range and positioning problem: there are a lot of sales to be had at the bottom end of the range, but it only makes sense to target them if your supply chain supports that. If, like the supermarkets, your supply chain favours volume, then you can cherry-pick the top sellers and live with a very low gross margin. What we’ve seen recently is high-street book stores squeezed between the supermarkets (volume, low price) and the online retailers such as Amazon (range).
Print-on-demand is a classic solution to this. It’s a good combination of Lean single-piece flow and Agile postponement. And it addresses an unmet need for customer value: a greater range available (almost) off the shelf.
I’ve been searching the web for more information but without much luck. It seems the technology was developed to support small publishers and has previously been used by short-run print shops. Pushing this into the retail outlet seems very smart. I’d like to know more about how long the customer has to wait for the print (5 minutes, one hour?) and what the pricing implications would be.
According to Neill Denny, a couple of US book shops already do this, and Foyles are looking at it, so we may find out soon.
Categories: Supply Chain News and Comment.
Tags: Agility, Green Supply Chain, Inventory Management, Technology
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from Martin Arrand
Time 29 May 2007 at 6:53 pm
Thanks Ross – yes, I think what’s new here is the idea that you would put the press in the shop and serve the end consumer directly.
“Long tail” is a good point too – in its established form print-on-demand facilitates this by making small press titles and self-publication easier. In the outlet there is still the problem of visibility and display (many bookstores limit displayed range by putting books face-out rather than spine-out on the shelf because it increases visibility and hence sales of volume titles). I’m not sure how this is resolved.
I think we need a post on the “long tail” soon – there are plenty of interesting supply chain angles.
Comment from Ross
Time 29 May 2007 at 3:59 pm
Hi Martin,
Yes I’ve heard about this too, it’s been around online for some time, allowing self-publication and out of print books back in to the public domain.
Aside from the benefits to the supply chain one can also see the potential for “long tail” type phenomena, ala Myspace.