4 - Book fulfilment on-demand

Abstract

Part 1 of the book covers the convergence of four pre-conditions to make print-on-demand for books work by highlighting examples across two decades of print-on-demand innovation: 1995–2015. This chapter covers the fourth area of technological and market development that was necessary for print-on-demand to impact the academic book which was book fulfilment, i.e. the physical book supply chain. This includes all aspects of book fulfilment to enable sales through all possible retail channels. Four critical elements of the book supply chain that needed to be in place to make scaled-up print-on-demand sales happen: electronic data interchange (EDI) of orders for books including shipping messages; effective book metadata describing each individual book in defined industry standards which one computer can pass to another; encoded metadata information into barcodes to speed-up handling processes for thousands of unique books; and supply chain innovations in the wider business ecosystems which made small parcel logistics cost effective for customers. The chapter concludes with two interviews and an extended case study. The first interview was conducted in 2016 with John Ingram, Owner, Ingram Content Group/Lightning Source Inc. USA where he recounts the origins of the first Lightning Print service, the establishment of Lighting Source Inc. and reflects on the author services publishing phenomena that print-on-demand enabled. The second interview was conducted in 2017 with Edwin Ng, CEO, Markono Singapore and he reflects on the origins of book print-on-demand in Singapore and the increasing importance of logistics, warehousing and distribution services offered by printers. Finally the extended case study is an extract from a PhD thesis dating from 2009. It covers three anonymous Australian University Presses and its author Xuemei Tian is now a Senior Lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.