Cross-posted to Chat, where replies should be sent. On 10/16/13 7:38 AM, Catherine Barley wrote:
However, I have no wish to be left with a pile of books in my dining room that are surplus to requirements,
What "print on demand" means is that they print, bind, and ship one copy of the book each time someone orders one. This makes the book more expensive than books printed in large numbers, but not as expensive as a book would have to be to cover the risk of being stuck with a thousand copies. If all goes well, once the final proof has been approved, you need do nothing other than let people know where the book can be purchased, and maybe deposit the occasional small check.
But there are a lot of incompetents and scammers in the field, and even the competent can be very difficult to deal with: for example, the PDF has to be prepared with exactly the correct PDF-making program, and which program that is constantly changes. There are people who make a career of learning the ins and outs of dealing with POD printers so that they can help people who want to publish only one book, but scammers and incompetents are even more prevalent in this field.
I used to belong to a Yahoo mailing list for self-publishers and small-press publishers who would guide each other through the tangles, but the traffic was so high that I was obliged to drop out.
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