Do you know POD (print-on-demand)? Well that’s quite easy: you choose the book you want and a machine produces it for you in a few minutes, cover, binding and all.
That’s not a dream: that’s today. As a self-publisher, Amazon and a number of others propose to put my book on display in their electronic stores. Should anyone buy it, a copy gets printed and sent.
No more stocks of hundreds of books that might not be sold. No more risk to produce stocks of no value. Just-in-time print-on-demand.
What’s visionary though is electronic bookstores just consisting of a print-on-demand (POD) machine. Because people still like to touch books and get a quick glimpse inside. But soon that will take off.
Think of it. Today more than 60% of the price of a book is distribution – manual handling, logistics, taking back unsold books etc. POD just does bypass this problem. It will remove distributors as intermediaries and create value by making more books physically available everywhere that a huge bookstore could ever contain.
POD will replace bulk manufacturing. Because it will also apply to everything else, not just books.
