Monthly Archives: June 2009

Print on demand. My experience.

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As a new self published author, I have obviously learned much in my short time, and one of the things that I have encountered a few misunderstandings with is the term “POD” or as we all know, or you will shortly, “Print on demand.”

I actually think that as someone who is passionate about recycling and trying not waste anything, that POD is perfect for the job of book production. I am not alone in this view, as it is actually a very cost effective tool for the production of books to the market. If I am honest, I think it would be right to say that there are many discarded books in this world that have come as a result of over production from very optimistic publishers attempts to create a large selling book. A mountain of paper must have been used in the past to create books, which lets say, did not quite live up to the mark and for one reason or another did not sell and ended up stored in a warehouse.

Business is at its core a supply and demand thing, so it makes perfect sense to provide a book printing service that is catered to that very point. You order the books of your choice, they are printed and posted straight out to you. Its good sense right? Considering the current financial climate it makes even greater sense, as it actually is a way of cutting down on the cost and maximising the profit.

So why is it when I walk into a bookshop, and begin to make my sales pitch to the shop owner on my own POD produced book, that as soon as the words are spoken, they frown and give me a look that would suggest they have tasted something foul? It makes no sense at all, here I am a new author with a great book (Not my words, but those who have read it) using modern technology to produce it in a way that is good for business and good for the Earth, and they then begin to treat me like I am infected with some sort of virus, I have witnessed my own book (You know the labour of love and devotion) actually dropped on the till as if the devil himself was about to flow out from under the cover and attack them. I think at this point I should raise my hands and state clearly for the record, I have no wish to offend, or create a stampede but, What the hell is wrong with you people?

New writer or not, I trawl the web as I attempt to self promote my book, which does involve reading huge amounts of stuff, a lot are articles from the writers and publishers world. I seem to read a lot of whining and bitching about how unfair the trade is and how it is hard for independent bookshops to survive. No offence but drop the snobbery. I love bookshops, like every author on earth, we love them with a passion, the smell, the feel, the personal service, its manner from heaven to all of us, But HEY, get with the plot. POD is not only the chosen process of many self publishing firms, its also now becoming the focus of quite a few larger publishing firms, Read your Bookseller. I would also like to add that it is also the future. Paper backs are being squeezed by the threat of digital books, and lets face it, if you owned a large publishing firm, wouldn’t you want to deliver the best book at the best price and actually make a profit from it. I realise I am new to this game, but hey I am not stupid, I have run my own plants business for years, and if I could have grown plants on demand I think I would be a hell of lot richer now.

Print on demand will become the future of the book trade, there are very few exceptions that would allow mass forward printing (Greetings Mr Brown) I would like to add that such was my concern I did contact my publisher as I was told by one bookshop, “Dont like em, they are difficult to return.” He informed “Its not a problem, every book we produce is returnable.” Phew I wiped the sweat from my brow, then I thought to myself, hang on, don’t return them, sell em. Its not positive thinking is it? I cringe at the picture of the shop assistant who half heatedly attempts to sell my book, whilst filled with the dread of knowing it might not go back if they don’t.

So my message to you all is simple, get modern and get environmental, and get with it. Let us gather in groups in the corners of our local bookshops and worship at the altar of POD. its the future and as a huge reading nation we should embrace it, actually you won’t have much of a choice, as like everything in this world the big companies will dictate the future, and a book produced cost effectively with a good chance at clear profit will always lead. technology improves weekly and POD books are getting better and better, if you doubt this buy mine and have a good look at it, its simple beautiful, and not a bad read either.

A New World.

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As a child I was always fascinated with those books and films that spelled disaster and the end for all of us. There was something about just a few survivors banding together and starting all over again in a new world. I remember reading the Day of the triffids for the first time and revelling in it, today it is still one of my all time favorite books. There are many films today that again repeat the stories of 30 years ago, but they do not seem to hold that wonderful sense of realism that John Wyndham created, somehow the Day of the triffids felt like it could actually happen, a big tribute I think to the authors writing skills.

I knew in my book I wanted to create a new world, but it had to contain remnants from the past of what is today, but in my book I refer to as “The old ways of modern man.” It was something I spent a great deal of time debating with myself. I knew that the world had to return to a green world filled with plant life, and so as my thoughts progressed through the long list of options that I had short listed, I turned to the one thing that I knew was a possibility, I turned to plant life. I have seen in my life growing up besides a disused railway, how quickly nature takes hold and claws back the land left by man. The railway I played besides as a child had been closed, and actually gave me more enjoyment as it had become a thick lush corridor of green life in as little as ten years. The time frame I was going to work with was twenty six years, as I wrote the end of man as we know him in the year of 2012, and then picked up the story in the year of 2038, a good sixteen years of extra plant growth later. I had at least worked out the recovery of the country, now I just needed to wipe out most of the population.

One of the things about living today, that is highlighted so often in the press, and especially over the last ten years, is the fear of invisible illness. Several times now we have all sat at home watching the TV as things grind to a halt with illness spreading round the country. I watched the smoke rise into the air, and I might add lost a lot of business during the BSE epidemic as the country closed and the fates that provided my income closed with it. I remember well the rows of cold trucks parked up behind the local hospitals when the NHS crashed during the winter flu epidemic and the morgues were filled to capacity. It was not long before I looked to a virus based in the simplest of diseases to wipe us all out, of course the flu is the one illness that we all suffer with as there really is no cure. It is a basic thing we all know and suffer from, and I turned it into the Red Death, a variation that had severe consequences. Its odd now as I wrote the red death several years ago, and yet today as I write we all live in fear of Bird Flu or as recent days have shown, Swine Flu.

Removing a large majority of the population in an uncontrolled pandemic would create havoc and chaos, it was easy to see how the country would be gripped in panic and lets face it with overwhelming deaths the country would soon fall apart as survival kicked in. We all know of the power inside to live at all costs, it does not take much to realise there are those who would turn on everyone in their bid to survive, we have seen it before and we will again. With the breakdown of law and government, there would be those who took things into their own hands and whipped up a frenzy in the name of survival, fire and looting and destruction always follow. Without an organised effort of prevention, which with this scale of death there wouldn’t be any, towns and cities would burn, and soon the world around that was made by man, would ultimately be destroyed by man, crumble and decay would do the rest, and in would step nature to clean it all back to green and bury the last remnants of mankind below.

I gave it three years, and threw in a few tricks of my own, as later books will show, but for now you have the idea, modern man falls down and the few that remain, which would still be numbered in a few hundred thousand would begin again and start to breed a new race of survivors. This is where it got interesting for me as a writer, as I was able to sit and think about what I would do if I was the figure of Old Jake Loxley. I had already worked out that my enemy would be the brutal bands of the Cutters, and I gave them the task of stealing the crops and metals from the surviving settlements. hence the term Cutter. Life in this case would have to return to a resemblance of the past, there is still enough knowledge in the world to see we could survive using skills of the past, just walk round any village fate in the summer, the craft stalls are full of it. As my world recovered old skills came back to the fore as the older members of the community revived the skills we thought were lost. Isolated country villages became the centres of knowledge for survival, even if those in the know were not as able and fit to do the work as they once were, enter the fleeing city folk, able and strong but lacking in skills, and here we see the perfect recipe to recovery, those with the knowledge and those who have the energy and stamina for the harder way of life to come, it all made perfect sense. Once I had twenty six years of recovery, I had my new world and I lined up the paper and switched on the computer and began my first line. Loxley is a town set deep in the wild moor…….. and book one began.