On-Demand Printing

The conventional way of printing was to have a publisher take the endeavor of producing several thousand copies of a book. The reason for this was that technology wasn’t versatile and it took considerable time before a machine (or series of machines for color printing) could be set up before a batch was printed. The time, labor, and test runs made it costly and, therefore, necessary to plan for large batches to cover these costs. The advent of better printing technology has allowed us to print in smaller batches at affordable rates. There are even machines called Espresso Book Machines that can print a copy of your book as you wait.

These kinds of services allow us to do on-demand printing, which is a term used to describe the system of printing copies only that you need. Instead of your money being tied up when you keep several books as inventory using the conventional printing system, on-demand printing doesn’t have any of that. Of course, the delivery cost can be detrimental if you are just transporting one book. Usually, a balance must be struck between the order quantity and delivery costs. Amazon, however, has set up a way to make true on-demand printing possible through its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system for both paperback and Kindle versions of a book.

At SimplePublish, we help you set up and use Amazon KDP to publish your books at absolutely no startup fees. Amazon only charges you when an order is made. We will instruct you on how to create an account if you don’t have one yet. You will also be guided on how to upload the details and files of your book whether it is a paperback or Kindle, or both. We will also advise you on the nuances of setting categories, keywords, rights, royalties, price, and selling territories.

There are two ways you can earn using Amazon KDP. The first is to let Amazon do everything for you. Just send customers to Amazon to purchase your book there. Amazon will collect the payment from the customer, print the book, and deliver it to your customer. You will be paid in royalties less the cost of printing. Amazon offers large royalty rates as much as 60% sometimes, depending on your choice of selling territories. The royalty you will receive = (book price x royalty rate) – cost of printing.

The second way to earn is to buy author copies from Amazon KDP. Author copies are sold to the author at cost. In short, you used Amazon KDP to print your books for you. When you have the copies, you can sell them at any price you want, and anywhere. In this scheme, you market the books, and you have the added cost of shipping the books to your address before you can sell them. Another added task is you need to do is arrange delivery for your customers.

If you see yourself going around doing short talks or workshops, you can bring a box of books to sell at these events. This second scheme is also good if you have a website to take orders coupled with an energetic social media marketing effort.