Our discussion with the academic press book rep about how his corner of the book business is being affected by the Internet also included a discussion of another aspect of the ongoing digital revolution: Print-on-demand. Until recently that phrase was associated almost exclusively with self-publishers and vanity presses, but the technology is being used more and more even by large and established presses to maintain their backlists or print “classics” without having to spend huge sums on printing and warehousing thousands of copies of a book which may sell only a few hundred copies a year.

Take, for example, the e-mail I received yesterday from Lightning Source, Inc., the printer/distributor we use at Idylls Press. According to their announcement, LSI has established a new “List Builder” program whereby publishers can submit at least 25 (and up to 250 titles) free of setup charges (usually around $100) between now and March 2007. This seems clearly aimed, not at the self-publisher or micro-press that publishes in onesies or twosies, but at the more established small presses and even midsized publishing companies trying to figure out how to make money (at less cost) from a growing mid- and backlist.

Way back in 1999, I believe, there was big talk about Barnes & Noble and Borders wanting to install print-on-demand machines in many of their stores. Well, they jumped the gun a bit, it would seem, but that doesn’t mean it was an idea whose time would never come. Check out this May 2004 article from Bookselling This Week.

The upshot: my academic press rep neighbor at the trade show and I were contemplating a near future in which the average bookstore might carry an inventory of a few dozen sure-fire bestsellers, and the rest of the sales would come from books printed on the spot via downloadable files in some Ingram-ish database.