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Page: POD is core to the digital revolution

02.06.08

POD is perhaps the most exciting book technology of our time, writes Faber chief executive Stephen Page in the Telegraph. "Faber Finds was conceived as a new imprint where books would only be available POD, and for which we would aim to keep costs so low that we could bring a book back into print in a handsome edition for as few as 50 people."

"There were plenty of impediments. Finding technical solutions for re-creating the pages and producing an elegant cover for minimal cost have stretched our designers and those producing our texts, but they have revolutionised many processes successfully.

"More so, POD had a poor reputation among agents and authors, who were concerned that the editions might be of substandard quality and that publishers might use them to hold onto rights unreasonably. Were we just building up a fat catalogue of copyrights, like absentee landlords?

"To overcome this we put writers at the heart of the project, approaching many of Faber's own authors first for selections for the list."


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Stephen Page Faber Print on demand POD

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By June Austin

Interesting article. I had to lauhg mind you when I saw the original yesterday and the Telegraph referred to POD as 'new'. Where have they been for the last decade ! ?

02 Jun 08 17:24

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By down by the beach

High-quality POD could change all the rules. What I would really like to hear debated fully though, is how people plan to manage this issue of rights reverting to the authors when books don't go out of print. Publishers aren't out to get authors, of course, but I think this is exactly why it would be good to have this out in the open, and to have an industry standard laid down. If this might be something we all could face, why not bash out something in public? Also, I'd really like to know what exactly is happening with Booksurge and Amazon ... is this going to creep into the UK market too?

02 Jun 08 17:44

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