Discussion: Today's topic comes from Dave, who asks why publishers let titles go out of print instead of just switching them over to print-on-demand, and wants to know why Mike S hasn't started his own Stormwolf Publishing to make his own out-of-print materials available again.
Listener Review: Jordan from Baltimore gives us a review of Drood by Dan Simmons.
The Library: New arrivals: Physics of the Impossible by Dr Michio Kaku; The City & The City by China Mieville; War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider by Louis DiMarco; The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron; Flinx Transcendant by Alan Dean Foster; Battlestar Galactica: Downloaded by David Bassom; Night of Knives: A Novel of the Malazan Empire by Ian C. Esslemont; GI Joe: Above and Beyond by Max Allen Collins; Rift in the Sky by Julie E. Czerneda
Submitting Listener comments: If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know!
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Timothy Zahn wrote the Terminator Salvation prequel and Alan Dean Foster did the novelization of the movie. Foster must be pretty busy with all the movie books he does ^^
I am responding to the POD issues discussed on episode 360B.
I have published my wife’s collection of essays, Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way, using POD. It is available for $12 as a printed book and for $6 as a PDF ebook from http://Jennerick.com. 10% of the cover price goes to ovarian cancer research.
I went through the whole publishing process. After looking at several printing options, I decided to go with CreateSpace.com which is a POD subsidiary of Amazon.com. The book is a 124 page trade-size paperback.
I wanted to address the points about pricing and shipping.
First on pricing, at a $12 cover price the margin per book after printing charges and discount is $4.90 for a 40% discount and $1.90 for a 65% discount. This kind of pricing will not allow you to publish a $7 mass market size book but it does allow you to publish a $15 trade size paperback.
Mr. Stackpoles’s second point was that he did not want to become a mail order house. I can not blame him for that. I had and have no interest in being a mail order house either. I have avoided it by using CreateSpace.com. They take the orders, print the books, ship to customers, and collect payments. They take a 20% cut as a charge for the service in addition to the print charge. As part of the service, CreateSpace.com books can also be ordered through Amazon.com as well.
We do not have purchase any stock or commit to a minimum quantity. We do not have to handle stock. Delivery times for single book orders have been in the 1 - 2 week range. We have been pleased with both the delivery time and physical quality of the books.
Lightning Source would be the ideal source for Mr. Stackpole. They list the books with Ingram, and allow the author to set up a 50% discount and to make the book returnable for booksellers. All he would have to do is set up the files.