Print-On-Demand Publishers

[Glenn Simonelli]

Does anyone have any experience with print-on-demand publishers? Has anyone in the forum ever published anything through one? If so, I would be grateful if you would share your opinions of the experience.

[Glenn Simonelli]

No. In the past, if someone published something you wrote they would print up X number of copies and then try to sell them. They often had a lot of resources bet on your eventual success. Now, however, some publishers are moving to a model where they don't print anything in advance. They keep electronic versions of everything and just print something out when someone orders a copy, usually through a web site. So these publishers don't have nearly the investment in their artists' success that traditional publishers do; it's not as compelling for them to try to promote their product, (although the more their artists sell the more they earn, too). The flip side is that because their expenses are lower they often offer much better royalty percentages. One publisher I've contacted pays 50% of sales.

So I wonder what the end result is--decreased sales because of less marketing, but possibly made up for by increased royalties? To be honest, I don't expect to earn a lot of money composing, but I would like to get my music heard and performed, so I'm more interested in exposure than profit at the moment. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of publisher and what the results were.

[Mike Torr]

Glenn, I think lulu.com actually does most of what you described, except I don't think they usually deal with music publishing and their Global Distribution Service was at extra cost. However, I think you could submit a PDF with manuscript in it and they could print it.

I am using lulu.com to publish a non-music book, though it's a very old project that I never seem to get around to finishing, so I don't actually have any experience of the final process. I got as far as ordering a proof copy, which was OK except the pages were rather thin and you could see through them.

I heard that lulu is having trouble with their global distribution service because they used to use Amazon and I think Amazon were going to stop the arrangement because they are now offering their own self-publishing service - you might want to look into that anyway.

[Switch Theory]

I have no experience with it but I have strongly considered using the site https://www.createspace.com/. They seem to have a great set-up