Terminology help
Print On Demand (POD)
Print on demand is changing the face of hardcopy publishing. Traditional publishers have always relied on long print runs and have taken an educated guess as to how many copies they are likely to sell, store and hope their guess happens to be reasonably accurate. For example, if a print run ends the publisher must decide to commission another run. This leads to the book going 'out of print' and is no longer available.
'Print on Demand' means a book run can be as low as a single copy, thus eliminating guess work and storing and also POD titles are never out of print and can be available for generations to come. Risks and cost elements are vastly reduced, allowing more titles to be printed. Your book can be made available to order through bookstores and via the Internet bookstores such as Amazon.
It is already the fastest growing section of the printing industry and has revolutionised the publishing business, making it affordable to a large number of aspiring authors like you, who no longer have to pay vanity publishers an extortionate amount to get their work into print. Our service can get your book in hard copy which can be available all over the world! Authors who have been published can also see their work back in print via the same digital Print On Demand printing system.
Advantages of POD
- Very low start-up costs
- Book can be printed from a simple word file.
- High quality book & full colour cover.
- Book print unit cost is quite reasonable.
- You don't need to sign away your rights.
- Good way to test the market
- Best for selling off Amazon.
- POD channel enables you to order small numbers of your books
- Good UK & US distribution
- No stock needs to be held resulting in no storage costs
- Will be possible for the public to order your book through book stores
Disadvantages of POD
- Print cost doesn't decrease over time or with quantity of books printed at any one time.
- A Print On Demand service will not put your book on the shop shelves. This will require a marketing and promotion campaign.
ISBN
The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is an international identification code which is unique to a particular edition of a particular title. An ISBN is a product number, used by publishers, booksellers and libraries for ordering, listing and stock control. Your book will be assigned its individual number. The ISBN provides the key to access a book in almost all bibliographic databases. It is therefore an important marketing tool.
If you want to sell your book through major bookselling chains or Internet booksellers, they will require it to have an ISBN to assist their internal processing and ordering systems. You will therefore need to make sure that it has an ISBN. Perfect Publishers provide this as part of its service for all its books. Don't confuse your ISBN with your ISSN or International Standard Serial Number. This is the number for newspapers and magazines which is administered by the British Library.
From 2007 a 13 digit ISBN will replace the existing 10 digit version For more information on ISBN, click here.
Legal deposit library
Why bother? It's the Law!
Legal deposit is the act of depositing published material in designated libraries or
archives. Publishers and distributors in the United Kingdom and Ireland have legal
obligation to deposit published material in the six legal deposit libraries which
collectively maintain the national published archive of the British Isles.
"The purpose of legal deposit is to ensure that the nation's published output (and
thereby its intellectual record and future published heritage) is collected systematically
and as comprehensively as possible, both in order to make it available to current
researchers ... and to preserve the material for the use of future generations ..."
Code of practice for the voluntary deposit of non-print publications, 1999.
How does it work?
The Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries acts on behalf of five libraries to ensure
that they receive legal deposit copies of British and Irish publications. The five
Libraries which support the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries are the ones named
below except the British Library which has its own Legal Deposit Office.
Publishers deposit one copy of every published work with each of the Legal Deposit Libraries
- Bodleian Library, Oxford
- British Library
- National Library of Scotland
- National Library of Wales
- Trinity College Library, Dublin
- University Library, Cambridge
Brief History of Legal Deposit
- 1610 Bodley Agreement
- 1662 Act (Bodleian, Cambridge & Royal Library)
- Copyright Act,1710 (NLS provision)
- Copyright Act, 1911
- Code for Voluntary Deposit, 2000
- Non-print publications
- Legal Deposit Libraries Act, 2003
If you wish to find out more about the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, further information
can be found on the Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) and on The Department of Media,
Culture and Sport website.
www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2003/20030028.htm
www.culture.gov.uk/libraries_and_communities/legal_deposit/
The Legal Deposit Library Agency - www.llgc.org.uk/cla/
For our American authors we also lodge their books at the Library of Congress. If you are not an American author but would like your book lodged there, please inform us.