Dear MWA: What's the Problem with POD?

First, I'd like to say that I am a member of Mystery Writers of America (and damn proud of it, thank you). I know people with the organization and consider them friends. The opinions expressed here have nothing to do with that. They are, in fact, suggestions made with the best of intentions and without malice.

Do I protest too much? I hope not.

In any case, as a card carrying member of MWA, I received the following notice (quoted in pertinent part):

"The National Board of Mystery Writers of America voted unanimously on October 6, 2010 to remove Dorchester Publishing from our list of Approved Publishers, effective immediately, primarily because the company no longer meets two of our key criteria.

"First, the initial print run by the publisher for a book-length work of fiction or nonfiction must be at least 500 copies and must be widely available in brick-and-mortar stores (not "special order" titles). In other words, print-on-demand publishers and Internet-only publishers do not qualify."

The second problem was failure to pay advances and royalties. An obvious no-no. But what is the problem with print-on-demand (POD) publishing?

I'd like to (respectfully, of course) make the following suggestion to MWA: POD publishing may not be all that evil.

Here are a few considerations in its favor:

1. It saves resources. By printing copies of books only as needed, paper and ink are preserved. In addition, the energy that goes into the production of print runs is conserved, as well. There's also the energy costs associated with transportation and warehousing the printed books to consider. With POD, books are ONLY produced as needed, when needed for whoever needs them. This eliminates the need for warehousing all those extra copies that don't get picked up by bookstores or other retail outlets.

2. Print runs put pressure on your authors. Yeah. Sell-through. How many presses out there are doing printings of 500 copies? Maybe a few. But not the kind with the resources to actually get them into stores. And to the extent print runs (of whatever size) do get into stores, the pressure is on the author to make sure they sell. Or guess what? They get penalized. It's the authors who bear the brunt of the 100% refund the booksellers get if the books are returned to the publisher. (Not to mention the waste of resources of returning books with torn-off covers. See #1.) This could be avoided, of course, with a business model based on POD. (Radical thought? Just wait ...)

3. Print runs perpetuate an old (and failing) publishing model. Let's face it. Despite the fact that print books still hold the lion's share of the market, that's not going to be true forever. The future (as I keep repeating, over and over) is in ebooks. Now, why would a publisher continue to cling to an old way of doing business when a new paradigm of doing business is emerging? Doesn't it simply make sense to shift to a POD model for producing print books, if ebooks are becoming more popular?

Don't believe me? Have you checked the Amazon rankings for Laura Lippman's latest release? Almost the minute it was released, the ebook version of I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE jumped right out of the gate and outsold its hardcover counterpart by leaps and bounds. The book was in the Top 100 in Paid Amazon for weeks. At $12.99 per download, no less. Now that's SAYING something.

You know Laura, right? I believe she's your president.