Kind eReader,

I don’t know about you, but everywhere I look I see shelves of copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Meanwhile, everyone I know who wanted to buy it already has his or her copy. Heck, they’re all done reading it already! In four months, how many of those huge volumes are still going to be gathering dust on the shelves of Target, Borders, and Wal-Mart?

What you’re looking at is a very noticeable demonstration of how conventional publishing works. Approximately 40% of books originally distributed to bookstores are returned to the publisher. Translation: turned into landfill. I have no statistics to back it up, but my guess is that’s a higher percentage of garbage production than any other industry. Do you think New York & Company sends back 40% of their clothes for trash? Does your local supermarket do that with food? Unfortunately, the nature of traditional webset printing is that it’s more cost-effective for publishers to destroy books than to do a short press run.

For some reason, homeless books make me really sad. When I opened my publishing company in 1998, I did the shortest economically feasible run for my first two titles. And I still have copies of them in inventory. Those boxes of books that were so lovely when I got them from the printer now just depress me, and not because I didn’t get paid for them by buyers. It just seems like such a sad waste of paper and ink.

The myriad copies of unsold “Harry Potter” are even sadder. They’re so big and heavy; just imagine the fuel consumed shipping them all over the world, and later when they are shipped back to their publishers again!

Print-on-demand technology being what it is today, I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t go that route. Why not have bookstores place smaller, more reasonable orders and have publishers print batches of books every week? I know very well how cheap books become per copy when you do a huge run of them, but really…how cost-effective is that when you’re having to destroy four out of every ten books you print?

You’ve heard this same argument before by proponents of ebooks. Nothing saves more trees and energy than going 100% electronic. But fact is, reading has been so long associated with paper books that there will always be print publishing going on. Lots of people want to have a physical book to hold and show off on the shelf. And some authors, like J.K. Rowling, refuse to release their works as ebooks. (Ironically, pirated Harry Potter books have consistently hit the web digitally before Rowling’s books are in stores!) Personally, I love ebooks but am still waiting for a truly user-friendly book reader to hit the market.

But yes, the save-a-tree argument also applies to POD printing. If you care about the environment, I’m here to suggest our world is being assaulted more by traditional publishing than by global warming. Keep in mind, if you buy yourself three POD books from some independent publisher, then three books will be printed and none thrown away. Buy them from Random House and two books are going to the landfill for your three.

All right, before I’m labeled an unrealistic tree-hugger, I have another beef to share that is even more significant than piles of rotting books. It’s because of this whole principle that big publishing houses are unwilling to sign new authors or contract for unusual books. They depend upon the tried-and-true, appeal-to-the-masses titles to keep those discards from being even higher than 40%. They want to do a press run of at least 10,000 copies.

I don’t like that the litmus test to determine if something is worthwhile to be read is whether you can (with minimal promotion, mind you) find 10,000 people willing to pay to read it. POD books make it possible to actually make money even if only a hundred people are interested in buying your content. No one need even have heard of you before–you can sell enough to make back your upfront cost that easily. With print on demand, countless authors are given a voice instead of those few hundred the big publishing houses deem worthy of being heard.

Now THAT I really love. Even more than the saving of many, many trees. And I really dig trees.

It’s wonderful watching new books and authors find an audience via those publishers that use POD. Absolutely everyone wins, even those people who simply live in the same world and never even hear of those books. And to those who refuse to dignify POD publishing, who treat that industry like a red-haired stepchild, I say, shame on you!

Those who truly love books rejoice over POD. It not only means fewer books are put to death, but that more are brought to life.

eRead on,

Diana

Diana Laurence is the author of the Soulful Sex anthologies of erotic romance fiction, and released her new paperback “Soulful Sex: The Paranormal, Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection” in March. Diana’s works are published by Living Beyond Reality Press (www.livingbeyondreality.com.) Visit her at www.dianalaurence.com or enjoy her blog at www.eroticawithsoul.blogspot.com.

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