Print on demand has achieved, quite simply, a revolution in the book printing industry. Until quite recently, printing a book was an extremely costly affair and could only be contemplated by either conventional printers/publishers, who were fairly certain of a manuscript’s chance of commercial success, or wealthy individuals who, no matter what the cost, wanted to have their work in print. Now, with the introduction of digital printing, it is possible to literally have just one copy of a book printed at a very reasonable cost. There are no printing plates involved, no conventional printing presses and no need for minimum runs of thousands of copies, just computers and digital printers.

This innovation has obviously had a huge impact on the book printing processes and opened up the availability of having one’s work printed in either a hardback or paperback format to almost anyone who has a creative writing flair. Another major benefit of print on demand is that there is now no need to warehouse large numbers of printed books to supply possible future demand, as the turnaround time from order to print and delivery is just a matter of days. This also means that a book need never go ‘out of print’ because the manuscript is kept as a digital file, so storage is no longer an issue.

All of these modern innovations mean that the economics of printing just one copy of your book is now incredibly affordable. For example, after the set-up costs of £795, you can purchase just one copy of your book (for this example, we’ve assumed your book is 252 pages long) for only £3.72. The freedom and flexibility this affords the unpublished author means that he or she can now become published with a quality printed and bound book for a price within almost everyone’s reach.