Thomas Lord [07.16.07 04:02 PM]

But wait...

Isn't the basic problem here that Amazon has outdated, inefficient systems for inventory management and order fulfillment? (Now there's something I never expected to say! :-)

JIT doesn't just mean smaller print runs at competitive price: it also means smaller and cheaper physical plants for book production at competitive price-per-capacity. Presses and bindaries are moving from being factories, to being pieces of office equipment.

So there must be ways to realize the value that's latent in the potential for highly distributed production of books.

In the case at hand, Amazon's famously pretty good fulfillment relies on keeping the "right number" of a huge number of titles on their shelves. The shipping services they use are very expensive, which they make up for by mostly guaranteeing very fast delivery -- requiring all of that inventory. The high expensive of the shipping, incidentally, is substantially a matter of fuel costs: so Amazon is also outdated in that they rely (like their brick and morter predecessors) on selling a finished product that has to travel many, many miles.

It's much cheaper to move bits than books. Jit doesn't need to get better working with the likes of Amazon -- it's headed towards largely replacing the likes of Amazon.

-t

  Thomas Lord [07.16.07 04:47 PM]

Maybe someday you'll see a print-on-demand machine in every local bookstore. But it's not likely to be soon. Until the cost of the printing machines is significantly lower, we're stuck with the more traditional pack-n-ship distribution.

There's a continuum, in between, though. How centralized does that pack-n-ship system have to be? As the costs of production go down relative to the costs of rent and transport, decentralized production becomes more and more favored.

You say that JIT isn't killing Amazon's capacity to speedily deliver but what's that doing to their costs and the costs of those printers? The long-haul solution for fulfillment that Amazon relies on just eats away at their and the JIT guys margins -- whereas the same JIT technology, differently deployed, could suck up more of those transport costs as profit.

-t

-t

  Thomas Lord [07.16.07 10:34 PM]

I'm sorry to be going on so but another idea here:

It's not just about paying for the machines, but also the architecture to hold the machines in a way that doesn't disturb the customers (bookstores are generally quiet and friendly and not very high-tech), and the staff to run and maintain the machines.

I think you are assuming that the choice here is between large, classic, factory presses -- and presses situated in the retail store itself. There are options in between -- like regional production. That's the "continuum" I'm talking about.

An analogy to produce: the alternative to big, energy-intensive, long-haul-of-finished-goods agriculture is, obviously, production that's more often using organic techniques and that happens regionally. That doesn't mean, though, that the grocery store has to grow it's own tomatos.

Long haul is best for raw materials. Production of finished goods is best regionally. This is pretty much the opposite of the received wisdom in how to encourage regional growth but, it's right anwyay.

In order to be successful, local print-on-demand solutions can't be equivalent in cost or slightly cheaper than shipping books around, they have cheaper by a huge margin to recoup the investment.

I see it differently. It has to match long-haul book shipping on price and surpass it in convenience and over all quality of experience. Amazon's list prices are fantastic but when you add in shipping, they're a very expensive way to buy. That's only going to get worse over the next few years as currencies adjust, energy prices continue a trend towards volatility, etc. Amazon only "won" against book and morters because they cleverly simplified inventory management and fulfillment in ways that legacy systems of sales staff visiting retail stores have trouble competing with (on costs). But, if inventories become relatively irrelevant...

-t

  Reb Yudel [07.16.07 11:40 PM]

As someone who has been running a publishing company which uses Lightning Source, let me say a couple of words in Amazon's defense.

Yes, it's more difficult to make changes in the Amazon database when you're not O'Reilly and you don't have Amazon's private number.

From Amazon's pov, however, Lightning really is part of their distribution system, because it's across the street from one of the major Ingrams warehouses. (If you remember your Internet 1.0 history, you'll recall that Jeff Bezos started Amazon as a bookstore because Ingrams already had the database of every book.) When books are in demand -- which translates to a couple or more sales a week -- Amazon will start preordering half a dozen copies at a time for their warehouse.

Allison: There's a pod publishers group on Yahoo that specializes in the details of working with Lightning Source and Amazon. And thank you -- or one of your colleagues -- for mentioning Lightning Source in PDF Hacks. Thanks to picking up that book at the right time, I am now a publisher with seven titles in print and a dozen more along the way.

  Peter Framp [07.17.07 05:39 AM]

For all the (tiny) problems with LSI, Lulu.com, and Amazon.com, this new (sorta, it's been in existence since 1998) publishing and distribution system is a godsend for the authors. We can quickly publish what we think is worth publishing risking our own time and money, bypassing the traditional publshing model. We're also no longer at the mercy of the vanity presses.

With a copy of a decent typesetting manual and a copy of OpenOffice.org one can write, typeset and generate a print-ready PDF of one's book on their laptop or desktop. One day after the PDFs are ready, the book goes live on lulu.com; five days later the book goes live on LSI; and, 2-4 weeks later it's live on all Amazon online stores, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers. With inexpensive proofreading, design, and editorial services available via eLance.com, who needs the traditional publishers? Oh, did I mention Google Book Search? :-)

  Frances Webb [08.18.07 07:56 PM]

I buy books online all the time and frequent Amazon. Did you know you can sell your own personal stack of books free there unless they sell you don't pay them a dime? Then you only pay a percentage. I have. After your through with reading one and you no longer need it, it's a good way to make a percentage of your investment back.

Postage isn't as big a problem as you think when you figure trying to drive around hunting for that one certain book you need at local bookstores when you can find upteen thousands online just about anywhere you look. Face it, online ordering isn't going away any time soon.Even libraries have a hard time keeping up with all the information online today. You order a book, it gets delivered to your house, and you go nowhere!

ALso ebooks will never be as popular as books in hand are. There's just something about owning your own copy of paperback or hardback book of your favorite authors. I can find info online about subjects but I still order books. I love to sit with a book in my hands and most of my friends so also.

  Marek Rafalski [02.26.08 09:54 AM]

First I read about printing od demand in Long Tail, Chris Anderson. In Poland I haven't heard about printing on demand. Really interesting business model.