POD

[Peter Knutsen]

One problem with PoD products is if you print them in one country and then ship them as individual packages to other countries, accross all sorts of customs barriers that are sometimes, e.g. Denmark, very hostile to small low-value packets.

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

The current plans of the SJGames Headquarters lists a room and the POD room.

My understanding what holding POD back is meeting SJ's quality issues.

It is something they want when the tech is ready

I am also under the impression that this is simply something far enough down on the priority list so that the relevant corporate officers haven't had a chance to sit down and say, "So, print-on-demand. How *do* we pull this off?"

Which leads to meetings with vendors, getting estimates, poring over spreadsheets and projections, and other staff time consuming endeavours. Which leads to less time for Steve and Phil and others designing games and toys and getting them out the door...

[Kromm]

We've had plenty of meetings and looked at plenty of spreadsheets. It boils down to this: "At the prices set by that those selling or leasing the current technology, if every last e23 customer who bought the PDF also bought the POD version, we wouldn't break even for most items." What we must determine, then, is whether there's a great, untapped market for printed materials among those who refuse to buy that content in PDF form . . . a market larger than the PDF market. Evidence that such a market exists is sketchy. The alternative is to wait for the technology prices to drop, which is what we're currently doing. There's a third option – handle POD for third parties as well as SJ Games stuff, so that the tech pays for itself – but Steve has rightly declared that he doesn't want SJ Games to become a printer, and just about all of his staff back him on that.

For the skeptical, note that this is well beyond the talk stage. There's space cleared in the warehouse. Staff have visited POD facilities to learn about the tech. We certainly want to do this. It's just that the economics of it aren't looking good right now (or weren't, as of January 2011, when I was last in Austin).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The alternative is to wait for the technology prices to drop, which is what we're currently doing.

Thanks, that's interesting.

To speculate wildly, the obvious components of an appropriate POD system are:

1. The high-volume, high-reliability b/w xerographic printer.
2. The lower-volume colour printer for covers.
3. The perfect-binder machine.
4. The trimmer.
5. The computer that runs it all.

Of those, the colour printer is the device with the obvious potential for a price fall due to new technology, and the overall system has the potential for price falls through improved manufacturing and integration, plus competition. A widening of the market into larger and smaller systems would also likely help.

[Kromm]

Consumables costs are a big deal. Currently, petroleum costs are rather high (and to those who like to get political, let's not do that here . . . the reasons don't matter for this thread). This impacts the cost to ship paper, ink, etc. to us, and to ship printed materials to customers. The inks are often petroleum-based, too. Paper costs are also up for other reasons, largely to do with tariffs and politics.

All of that gets cheaper at higher volumes. It's special-ordering small amounts of materials, and shipping one or two things out to dozens of addresses, that gets costly. Thus, where a big, centralized print run might be affordable for a large book, small, on-demand runs of short items look kind of lossy.

It has been 18 months since I reviewed detailed figures, but I seem to recall that the cost of having the machinery wasn't the issue. You could sink that and, with some skill, eventually pay it off. It was the above considerations that were somewhat deal-breaking.

[johndallman]

Thanks, that makes sense. It does indicate that licensing POD to some other company that already does a lot could work financially. But maintaining quality standards could be hard work.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Kromm

... It's special-ordering small amounts of materials, and shipping one or two things out to dozens of addresses, that gets costly. ...

Presumably the "shipping one or two things out to dozens of addresses" part has been solved, since Warehouse 23 is still in business. The other parts of the process still need solutions for SJGames' budget, though...

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by robkelk

Presumably the "shipping one or two things out to dozens of addresses" part has been solved, since Warehouse 23 is still in business. The other parts of the process still need solutions for SJGames' budget, though...

Ash he was talking about the scale of the print run (which is by definition small for POD) not the the actual shipping cost

[Kromm]

There are lots of parts to the cost, and they scale differently for different processes and product types. I'm not the expert there! However, do bear in mind that people expect POD items to cost less in toto than items produced in other ways (I have no idea why), which means that even modest shipping costs, acceptable for other items, can cut into sales.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Kromm

There are lots of parts to the cost, and they scale differently for different processes and product types. I'm not the expert there! However, do bear in mind that people expect POD items to cost less in toto than items produced in other ways...

Really? That seems counter-intuitive. I would think that having a book printed just to suit my whim would come with a premium, if anything.