PODcast Publisher Newsletter August 2012

Welcome to the Printondemand-worldwide PODcast!

What a busy few months it’s been here at Printondemand-worldwide! Throughout May and June we extended and restructured the print production plant to take full advantage of Lean Manufacturing principles and to cope with the ramp up in volume we are experiencing.  Further colour print presses were introduced to complement our HP Indigo presses and as part of our commitment to reduce our impact on the environment in June we fitted solar panels in the production plant.  More information is below.

Over the course of the next few months we will be running Publisher open days at the plant. If you are interested in attending please contact your account manager or click here to register your interest or email Kathy in Marketing (kathy@printondemand-worldwide.com) and we will contact you with further information.

We are also running a summer print promotion – read on for more details!

We hope you find this edition of the newsletter interesting and informative.  If you have any suggestions for topics you would like to us to talk about please do share your feedback here.

Fifty shades of grey… the ‘summer washout mono sale’ is now on at Printondemand-worldwide!!

Have you been saving your money for a rainy day?

Dip your toe in the water with Printondemand-worldwide with our mono printing summer price reductions!

Contact us for a quote on 01733 237867, quoting ‘SS2012’, there are huge savings to be had!

Offer for short run mono printing only, at our standard pricing. To redeem the reduced rate the work must be printed and invoiced by the end of August 2012. Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer from PODW. Offer excludes BookVault and contractual rates.

Using our new website to obtain quotes and order has never been easier!

You may have noticed over the last month or so that our website has had a facelift! We have launched our new PODW website, which allows better navigation, in order to make your lives easier. We have ensured whether you are viewing the site on a pc, smartphone or tablet, your view and functionality is not compromised!

Whether you want to search for a specific product or service, calculate your spine width, or learn about Printondemand-worldwide, the website is full of great information and business solutions!

Visit the new website and have a look around, you may be surprised what you find!

Please note that the prices displayed on our website online calculator are standard prices and not publisher pricing.

The sun will come out, tomorrow!

At Printondemand-worldwide we have decided that sustainable, renewable energy is the way forward for us and our customers and so have fitted solar panels for the roof of our print plant in Peterborough.

With Peterborough City being one of the UK’s four nominated Environment Cities, our MD Andy Cork advises his focus has always to push Printondemand-worldwide to be a truly environmentally conscious company, “We use PEFC and FSC certified papers for our book production, which means we can guarantee we supply products with respect for the highest, ecological, social and ethical standards of supply, and we also manufacture ‘eco’ books. It means we calculate and offset the carbon associated with production and transportation of the books. More and more of our customers are embracing and even demanding this approach to business. Solar panels now add to our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and strive for environmental excellence.”

“What’s more, by reducing our overheads, in turn our customers gain the benefit, with our services being cost effectively priced and giving them piece of mind at the same time!”

Now, you may think that our less than sunny summer maybe wouldn’t be the best time to fit the panels. In fact, there is even a misconception that solar panels don’t work in the UK.  This is far from true.  Solar panels generate energy from indirect sunlight; meaning even on a cloudy day some energy will still be produced.  Printondemand-worldwide are doing our bit to make Peterborough a truly green city, and our business carbon efficient, here’s to more of the same across the UK!

Click here to learn more about the project.

Want to reduce your own carbon footprint?

Ask your Account Manager about our ‘eco’ book and carbon offsetting services or call us on 01733 237867 to learn more!

E-Book sales overtake hardback sales for the first time in the USA!

With the launch of our new E-Vault global e-Book distribution website we have been closely tracking the sale/loan stats of e-Books v the sales of hardcopy books. According to a report published by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) American publishers are now bringing in more revenue from e- Books than hardcover books.

E-Book sales grew by 28.1% between 2011 and 2012.  And for the first time, hardback book sales have been overtaken by the digital version in the first quarter of 2012.

According to the March Association of American Publisher net sales revenue report (collecting data from 1,189 publishers), adult e-Book sales were $282.3 million while adult hardcover sales counted $229.6 million during the first quarter of 2012. During the same period last year, hardcover accounted for $335 million in sales while e-Books logged $220.4 million.

Here’s more from the report, “In Q1 2012, net sales revenue for e-Books was higher than that for Hardcover; this represents a switch of positions in the category vs. Q1 2011.  In both quarters, however, Trade Paperback remained a clear #1 in net sales revenue despite some erosion. While e-Books continue to show growth, downloaded audiobooks also keep accelerating vs. last year – as some experts have said, tied to ongoing popularity and acquisition of smartphones and mobile devices.”

It’s worth noting that this is US data- Nielsen book data do not currently report on e-Book sales within the UK.  We look forward to a time when we can all see the whole market sales broken down in transparent form but it may be some time coming!  However, it gives us an insight into the global market for digital and printed books.

For more information on this story, click here.

The link between Metadata and Sales… make your titles stand out from the rest and increase your sales!

As part of our commitment to ensuring our POD retail model offers publishers effective incremental revenue, this month Printondemand-worldwide was invited to attend an open day held by Nielsen, focusing on the importance of publisher, distributors, and agencies working together to ensure effective and efficient use of the supply chain.

Nielsen is the leading provider of a comprehensive mix of services that covers print and digital publications; collection and aggregation of data as well as disseminating book records worldwide.

The book trade, more than any other industry perhaps, is reliant on sharing product data in order to function efficiently. That’s why Nielsen has spent time researching the correlation between the detail of metadata provided by publishers and the resulting book sales.

Some of their key findings:

·         The best performing titles are the ones containing key enhanced metadata elements

·         Titles that meet the BIC Basic Standard see average sales 98% higher than those that don’t meet the standard

·         The addition of an image has a strong impact on average sales, of 268% in comparison to titles without an image

·         Ensuring that all four key enhanced metadata elements are present on product records can help average sales rise by 55% in comparison to records where none of the enhanced elements are present

·         Split into offline and online sales, offline sales see an increase of 35% for ‘enhanced’ titles, whereas online sales see a massive 178% increase

·         For Fiction, Specialist Non-Fiction and Trade Non- Fiction the long description appears to be the most vital piece of enhanced metadata, whereas for Children’s titles the most vital appears to be the short description

·         Fiction is the genre most significantly affected by the completeness of both BIC Basic and enhanced metadata.

In short, in each way that Nielsen analysed the data, there was a consistent positive relationship between the level of metadata supplied and sales, with correlation being particularly strong for the online retail sector.  It’s logical that an online consumer is reliant on the bibliographic data to locate the desired product, if that data is lacking or inaccurate, that consumer is bound to be dubious in purchasing that product.  At a time where the digital world and online retail of both printed and electronic books is a key focus for publishers marketing I think it gives us food for thought.  It is in fact the simple metadata, and enhanced detailed metadata, the small forgotten aspects of a book launch, which could in fact be the key to increasing your sales! Is your metadata as ‘juicy’ as it can be?

Click here to view the full white paper results from Nielsen.

To find out more about our retail model and increasing your platform for sale.