From: "Ben Turner" <ben_at_vrpa.com>
Hi-
I have been referred to your discussion group by Linda Di
Biase of the
University of Washington.
We are publishers of classic and scholarly texts in
Seattle. We have been
very interested in the new Print on Demand (POD) technology
that allows the
production of small numbers of books from electronic files
at an
economically feasible price. The reason that this is
exciting to us (and
others in publishing, as you are probably aware) is that it
could mean that
we could keep in print, or bring back into print, many books
that are not
financially viable using the traditional technology.
So, my librarian/archival question is that of quality. This
Print on Demand
technology is laser based. These printed pages can be
subject to the
rub-off, stick-together, and pull-off problems that other
laser-printed
copies are. I have some concern that this printing is not
as permanent as
we would want for a book meant to be kept for decades as a
reference or
"special" book. Also, these books are usually perfect
bound. The quality
of
these bindings can vary a lot, which is not really dependant
on the POD
technology. They can be bound as well as any other perfect
bound book, but
sometimes the product from an in-line binder that may be
used is not high
quality.
This raises a lot of questions.
1. Are there are any standards regarding this new
technology? Both the
printing method and the binding are issues. I do not think
that the paper
quality needs to be a problem. There is no reason that I
know of that acid
free paper could not be used, although typically I have not
seen it done on
POD books.
2. Is there any way that you would know that a book is
produced using POD
technology before you bought it? There are some printers
that are able to
produce a very nice looking page, difficult to distinguish
from an inked
page, except after a stint on a hot dashboard or some time
with a plastic
bookmark in place. There is currently no standard practice
that encourages
the publisher/printer to make any sort of disclosure about
how the book has
been produced. Should there be?
3. Would you buy books for your respective libraries
produced using POD
technology?
4. Would you, as a group of librarians/collections
specialists, have any
guidance or advice to me as publisher? We want our books to
be able to
reach a wide audience (economically) and also be acceptable
to libraries to
purchase for their permanent collections. We would not want
to be in the
position of having produced a book that no library would buy
because of
quality.
Many thanks for any thoughts around these issues.
Ben Turner
BPS Pariyatti Editions
Vipassana Research Publications of America
7557 Lake City Way
Seattle, Washington, 98115
phone: 206-524-2978
fax: 206-522-8295
email: ben_at_vrpa.com
Received on Fri Oct 08 1999 - 12:42:46 EDT