Book Authors Must Get Ready for Instant Books

The Guardian had an article the other day about UK bookseller Blackwell's plan to install print-on-demand systems throughout their 60 chains - right now 40 pages a minute, but eventually 80, meaning that a buyer could get any of the million titles available in about 4 to 8 minutes.

As with most technological changes, there are ups and downs. The pros for authors is the ability to keep books available at stores, where people are doing their buying. Yes, a majority of book sales happen outside traditional bookstores, but don't knock that big an audience. Even if your book isn't on the shelf, there's a chance that someone could find it.

But now for reality. This is going to be a big marketing onus on the writer. Publishers barely support a brand new book in its first three months of life, so who is going to create buyer awareness of your title? You are, or else you aren't going to get sales off these machines. And for how long does the publisher get to keep your book on the backlist? Have you checked the out-of-print clause in your publishing contract recently? It may be that so long as there is one edition - like a print-on-demand one - the publisher gets to keep the title as active. But if you get the rights back, is the book even going to be in the system? How easily can you get another version ready?

There are no set answers, just questions that require some thinking for those of us who want to make a living in this industry.