Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

I found this interesting article on print-on-demand publishing yesterday, and offer it for your reading pleasure this morning.

Why?  Well, for one thing, it’s my belief that print-on-demand publishing will be the direction in which book publishing moves in the future.  It is more economical, for one thing.  For another, it is more environmentally friendly: books are only printed when purchased, rather than having huge runs of copies printed, as they are now.  For a third, it is more democratic, allowing more people to publish their work, rather than having publishers rely on a small stable of highly-profitable authors.  Finally, books will be able to remain in-print for longer periods of time, since publishers will not have to keep inventory on hand.

Naturally, there are drawbacks, such as the potential for lack of editorial review for manuscripts.  Also, there will likely be an increase in vanity publishing.  Another potential problem is how to link these works to e-book readers like the Kindle, with its closed architecture platform?

Still, I don’t think that these drawbacks are insurmountable.

What do you think, readers?