POD Publishing

At OryCon, I attended several panels and presentations on publishing. My interest in this topic has a couple of sources. First, I want to sell stories and novels to existing publishers. Second, I want to publish a few things myself, i.e., be a publisher.

Print-on-demand (POD) technology and internet marketing now make it easier than ever for anyone to be a publisher, but that's not news. What was news to me was the extent to which many commercially viable small presses (as opposed to home-based, hobby-style entities) and even large publishers are relying on POD. The quality of the physical product is now practically indistinguishable from books printed by the traditional offset method, and for small print runs of trade paperbacks, POD makes economic sense. Of course the quality of the editing and the layout is another matter. I saw some beautiful POD books, and a saw some sloppy ones.

I attended a presentation by Robert Plamondon, who runs a one-man publishing company called Norton Creek Press. Most of his titles are nonfiction on the topic of caring for chickens. Some are authored by him and some are old titles now in the public domain. He's also published his own science fiction novel and a formerly out-of-print role-playing-game book that he'd authored, which was originally published by a traditional press. His chicken books sell best. I think he said he'd sold four copies of his novel to people other than relatives and friends (they were readers who liked his chicken books). Nonfiction is always easier to sell.

I found Plamondon's presentation especially interesting because his publishing business is similar to what I've envisioned for myself -- not hugely ambitious, but not amateurish either. He also uses Lightning Source (LSI) as his printer. My aviation biography of my dad is just now ready to publish, and I'd already decided to use LSI. So I was gratified to learn from Plamondon and other small and mid-size press people at OryCon that I'm on the right track with LSI.

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