Ask HN: Print-on-Demand (POD) book publishing – what are your thoughts? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Print-on-Demand (POD) book publishing – what are your thoughts?

1 pointvanilla-almond2 comments

What are your thoughts on POD book publishing as a reader and as an author?

The positive: POD book publishing gives any independent author the oppourity to print a book (no minimal orders required).

The negative: I've come across many reviews on Amazon from readers complaining about POD books made with cheap paper and poor print quality.

There's also a problem of counterfeit books.

Authors: Lots of authors use services like Gumroad and Leanpub for publishing digital books. Have you found counterfeit POD books of your work?

Readers: Have you ever bought a book to discover it was a counterfeit book? Or if you bought a legitimate POD book, did you notice the print and paper quality?

Personally I don't think POD is good for the independent author, too much of it is authors publishing before they are ready and it buries the minority who are ready and just taking a different path, a great many readers seem to completely ignore self published authors because of it. The more traditional path of starting out with short stories in journals and the like gives the writer a chance to hone their skills, get feedback, and make contacts in the industry, skipping this seems like a huge loss for the writer.

POD is getting pretty good and it has enabled a great deal of specialty books to stay in print, Princeton and Cambridge have gone heavily into POD and both have good quality, I have a few ~1000 books from them which have held up very well. There is a good amount of garbage quality POD out there from what I have seen, but there is also a good amount of garbage traditional printing out there so I am not sure this means anything, finding well made books is easier for the reader with the traditional options.

I would enjoy finding my books being counterfeited, I doubt I am even on libgen or the like yet. I have never gotten a counterfeited book that I am aware of.

Print on demand can produce quality printing on quality paper at a reasonable cost that meets or exceeds most people's expectations.

Binding though, is another matter because it is mostly a matter of limiting expectations.

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