Why I Self-Publish and Use POD
When I first started selling prints online, it was all very exciting. My phone would ping, or my computer would bling and I knew an order had been made. At the end of the day I would send my orders to the printer and walk to pick them up a few days later. I would sign the prints, package them up carefully, and include a few extras, a small sketch, maybe some stickers and definitely a thank you note. This was time consuming but, by far, my favorite part. Then I would walk these tubes to the post office, and maybe pickup more prints at the printer, on the way home. Four out of five weekdays this became routine. Being a sole proprietor, my shipping department was me, so my art department, being me as well, suffered.
Along comes POD, print-on-demand services. What truly bothered me about my whole shipping procedure was that this singular print had to be handled so many times. There was too many steps in-between. As much as I loved writing the thank-you note and personalising the package, it seemed wasteful in some way, and especially when this printed piece of paper was flying in a tube over the ocean to another continent.
There are many POD printers to choose from and I chose one that had good reviews for their printing quality and their international availability. They even offer to include your logo on the invoice, though this doesn’t quite make up for the lack of a personal hand written thank-you. Knowing that my artwork, a printed reproduction of my artwork, was going straight from the printer to their doorstep, both in the same continent and sometimes in the same state or country made me feel a lot better.
So when it came time to publish my first book, I looked for exactly this model. There are many POD book publishers out there as well. Some require set-up fees, some provide an ISBN number, and they all have varying royalty rates. The other important thing to consider is your distribution, and if your POD printer includes distribution and where. Everyone knows that buying in bulk can save money on the individual item and this holds true for printing one book at a time compared to printing thousands all at once. Printing one book at a time is expensive for the printer, even if they streamline the options. This can help you understand why a book from a small independent artist, choosing POD, is a little more expensive.
I am a small, independent fine artist and do my best to operate my life with an environmental responsibility. My self published books are unique and definitely fit the description of a niche market. If I were to sell 10000000 copies of my book, then after picking my jaw up from the floor, I would consider other printing avenues beyond POD. For now, I am happy that there are NOT 10000000 books sitting in a warehouse, that need to be shipped, one at a time, to people all over the world. It is as simple as that, as to why I chose to publish with kdp publishing.