The POD People Are Coming! Shoot them!, by Ken Arnold

When I stared KenArnoldBooks earlier this year, I chose to print digitally–or, to use the vernacular, print on demand. As a publisher of many years, I thought it just made sense to print books as they are needed and to sell them through Amazon and stores that really wanted to carry them. My colleagues warned me that POD is a bad word in the publishing industry because of its association with vanity houses. But, I said, surely reviewers, booksellers, and industry professionals will look at what we are publishing not at how we print.

Wrong. Can you believe it? There are review media that categorically refuse to consider a book printed digitally. What does the mode of printing have to do with the quality of a book’s content or the validity of an author’s argument or the effectiveness of a poet’s words?

But there you have it. Several review media, including on-line sites, explicitly exclude POD books. Kirkus refuses to review them. When I tried to sign up for Cataloguing in Publication, the rejection stated that subsidy publishers are ineligible for CIP. But there was nothing in my application that indicated KenArnoldBooks is a subsidy operation. IT IS NOT. The CIP office has not yet answered my inquiry about their reasons for declining our application, but the only aspect of it that might raise a question is the small size of the initial printing. Ah-HA! screams the CIP bouncer. A POD publisher! The back of me hand to ye, publishing scum. You’re not dressed well enough for this club. No CIP for you. What if a library actually found out about one of your books! No, the public must be protected.

This response from review media and other publishing bigots is simply empty-headed, to use a phrase milder than the one in my head. Guess what, guys: the landscape is changing. The Espresso Book Machine is around the corner. We do not have to kill every tree in the forest when we publish a book. What is the point in filling the warehouse with books that usually do not sell in anything like the printed quantities? Just because the American way is to Supersize everything–more fries, cheesehead?–is it really true that the size of a printrun is an indicator of quality? My book is bigger than yours? Go back to your office, retrieve your brain, and then we’ll talk.

I called a bookstore here in Portland and said that our books can be ordered through Lightning Source. The bookseller practically leapt through the phone line and ripped my throat. “I don’t deal with Lightning Source,” she snarled. Well, excuse me.

Now, we know that many main-stream publishers use POD technologies. They use them to keep old books in print. Some, such as Wiley, do a huge amount of POD business. My publishing offense is that I dare to use these technologies for trade books. Nope. Sorry. Uh-uh. That’s against the rules.

Our company was the subject of an article in The Oregonian yesterday in which Jeff Baker, the book review editor, supported our efforts. “Local Publisher Saves Trees,” was the headline. Thank you, Jeff. I am glad there are still some open-minded people in the biz.

POD is like Rock and Roll. It’s here to stay. A lot of smart people thought the Internet was a passing fad. A lot of publishers still think it’s just a place for foolishness. Nobody reads books on line or on cell phones or on Kindle. Except in places like Japan.

The old media that pretend the world is not changing are welcome to their prejudices. I just want to know why they have to stigmatize all publishers who use POD for trade titles, regardless of the books and their merit. Can anyone tell me that?

Why perpetuate a wasteful system?

Must have something to do with profit and the corporations that benefit from warehouses full of really dead trees.