Book Distribution via POD


Print-on-demand—is it right for you?

Print-on-demand (POD) is a good way to distribute your book as it gives you access to markets you wouldn't otherwise have access to. You can use POD to test the market, build residual income, increase your author platform and more.

You can order stock to sell your book directly to readers and/or you can offer the book via POD to tens of thousands of booksellers all over the world.

Advantages include:

  1. Print-on-demand places your book on a database accessed by millions of people around the world. We can support you to sell on Amazon and/or on Ingram, which has over 39,000 online bookstores, physical book retailers, libraries and schools. Both options give you access to online book markets in the UK and Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
  2. With print-on-demand you can order copies of your book as you need them (1–500)
  3. The alternative involves a large and risky investment in a print-run of 1,000+
  4. Print-on-demand saves you from having to store large numbers of books and handle shipping of orders yourself

How does print-on-demand work?

PublishMyBook.Online will design your book for print and help make the print-on-demand arrangements with your POD supplier, such as Amazon or Ingram/Lightning Source. Once we have your print-ready book files we submit them to the printer. They charge us a fee for each individual file we submit as they check the files and store them on their server. There are annual fees for storage with Ingram, too, which you will need to pay.

Once it is set up you will be able to print and ship copies of your book to you as needed, usually within 2–4 weeks.

Book design and typesetting

Please visit our book design page for more details about our top quality book layout (typesetting) services. If you're looking for one of the best book designers in the world, contact us.

Cover
You can choose from hardcover and paperback.

Book size (also known as trim size)
We can design books at just about any size and we can advise you if the printer you wish to use accepts that size and orientation. Most offer dozens of options in paper size, however, print-on-demand companies do not usually produce landscape books.

With novels and memoirs, we often work with books sized at B format (198mm x 129mm), a common paperback size. If you have a specific book size in mind please let us know.

Paper
You can choose to have a white or creme interior page colour. Look at your favourite books to find out what you prefer. Note: some book sizes impose limits on paper type.

Colour
All covers are printed in colour. We can set the printing at greyscale or full colour for the interior pages of your book. Note: as POD is printed digitally, you will be able to see (upon close inspection) the dotted print matrix. This is slightly more noticeable with greyscale images and text as they only print with black ink, so in order to create gradients, they have to use a technique called ‘halftones’.

Binding
Choose from:
Saddle stitch, perfect bound, case laminate (hardcover) and cloth binding (note: not all binding types are available for different page lengths and sizes. Please let us know your preferred binding and we will see if the printer in question allows it).

Print-ready Files
PublishMyBook.Online can generate an attractive layout from your Microsoft Word (or other) manuscript. We can also design the cover for your printed book, which involves creating one single PDF of the back, spine and front cover.

PublishMyBook.Online employs professional book designers and has the combined experience of designing and publishing more than 100 books or magazines for print.

If you are halfway through an attempt to do it yourself, please let us know, as we will need to analyse your files before providing a quote to take it further. Please contact us about our book layout files analysis fee.


How much will I earn from selling my book via print-on-demand?

The earnings you receive will depend on the RRP of your title, the printing and shipping costs for your book, the country and currency of the sale, and the discount offered to booksellers. For more specific information relevant to your situation please engage one of our publishing consultants.


Your book on bookstores

Once we have loaded your book to POD and approve it for distribution it can take anywhere from 2–6 weeks to display your book on the booksellers.

It is the bookseller’s right to display the book however they like using the information provided by PublishMyBook.Online. This may include displaying the RRP differently from how it was supplied.


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