Ingram and IBM Transform Book Publishing and Distribution
Single Copy Book Printing Service Offers Consumers Access to Out Of Print Books
ON DEMAND 98, BOOTH #406, NEW YORK (May 05, 1998) – Revolutionizing the publishing industry, IBM is working with Lightning Print Inc., a new venture from Ingram Book Company, to print single copies of paperback books as they are ordered by the consumer. Using IBM InfoPrint digital printing solutions, this ‘print-on-demand’ service is now giving consumers access to thousands of low-demand titles which would otherwise go out of print, while offering publishers, booksellers and authors new revenue streams.
With Lightning Print’s service, publishers can now cost-effectively sell low-demand books — for example, those that would traditionally go out of print or those in a test market phase — without having to incur the cost of offset printing and warehousing thousands of copies of a book. This creates new revenue opportunities in an industry where 40 percent of the books produced in 1996 were destroyed due to disappointing sales. Moreover, publishers can now easily retain their publishing rights to titles which formerly were lost as the titles went out of print.
Using IBM InfoPrint solutions, a typical book is downloaded from Lightning Print’s digital library and printed in less than one minute. Shipment to the online or physical bookstore, through Ingram’s well-established distribution channel, is usually within 24 to 48 hours of the order being placed. Lightning Print is now offering this service to Ingram Book’s network of tens of thousands of publishers, authors and online and physical booksellers.
“The IBM InfoPrint technology produces books which are virtually identical to their offset-printed original counterparts,” said Larry Brewster, Ingram vice president and general manager of the new Lightning Print division. “The quality is remarkable – the books feature full-color covers and one color interiors.”
There have been numerous successes in the pilot stage which has just been completed. These include a request for 400 copies of singer
Paul Robeson’s out-of-print biography the week following his 1998 Grammy win. Another order came from a publisher who wanted 50 copies
of an out-of-print preacher’s book for a Sunday school class. Lightning Print was able to fulfill the request at a reasonable cost and, when three subsequent sets of orders were received, it was easily able to handle these small, multiple orders as they came in.
Publishers too have found new uses for this technology. “We approached Lightning Print with the idea of printing galleys on-demand,” explained Phil Pfeffer, president and chief operating officer of Random House, Inc. “Using InfoPrint, the quality is excellent, the cost is competitive and the turnaround time is impressive. We now plan to print thousands of galleys and reader editions each year using Lightning Print’s service.”
Steven Schragis, publisher at Carol Publishing Group in Secaucus, N.J., said Lightning Print is enabling his company to re-circulate 14
titles, including The Complete History of the Negro Leagues, as well as out-of-print collections of short stories by the science-fiction
writer Philip K. Dick.
“We face this issue every month when we have our reprint meeting,” Mr. Schragis explained. “There are a lot of hard decisions when we’re out of stock on a particular title, and fewer than 100 re-orders come in. This program provides the answer for those books. We see this as an opportunity, and I wanted to be in on the ground floor.”
Source: IBM