What is "Printing On Demand" (POD) and how does it work?

With ALIVE Book Publishing, when it comes to having your book published in either soft-cover or hardback formats, you will have a variety of options.

ALIVE can create specialty books, printed using traditional methods, with about any specifications you might imagine. For example, you may want a leather cover, a debossed or embossed dust jacket, or colored-thread binding. No problem. We can create about anything you can think of.

Our worldwide distribution program books are available in both hardcover and softcover formats, with either black and white or color interiors, in a variety of sizes. These books are all created through a print-on-demand (POD) process. POD is a smart, efficient method of book production used as an alternative to traditional offset printing methods. POD books are digitally archived and printed individually, as they are ordered. In today's fast-paced, competitive, digital environment, books published “on demand” enjoy considerable advantages. Publishing in this way allows the bulk of the financial investment to be directed where it needs to be--in marketing and advertising your book, not in printing large quantities of books.

Up-front production costs are low because books are stored digitally and then printed and shipped in as little as 12 hours from the time of each individual order. In most cases, books produced in this way are always listed as being "in stock" by retailers.

Although POD books are produced quickly, there is no difference in the appearance or quality of books produced this way, as compared to books produced in traditional, offset printing methods. Another advantage of the POD component is that ALIVE can inexpensively launch a "pilot study" version of a book into the marketplace and then easily make modifications to that book if needed.