The Development and Dilemma of Print on Demand (POD) in Taiwan’s Scholarly Publishing
Date Issued
2014
Date
2014
Author(s)
Jhang, Wei-Lin
Abstract
POD is a publish model with two characteristics: (1) customized printing amount, (2) printing electronic documents via digital printer. There are many advantages for publishers to adopt the POD model: (1) printing publications according to reader’s need, (2) selling printed book flexibly, (3) relieving the problems of book return and stocking, (4) putting an end to out-of-print. Some scholars and professional organizations such as OCLC regard the POD model suitable for academic publications which is niche market. However, POD had been invented for more than ten years, but its application is not as extensive as some literature and reports expected. Therefore, this study focuses on two questions: (1) How do academic publishers use traditional printing, oncoming POD and e-Book publish models? Why do they use these models? (2) What is the development and limitation of POD? To realize above-mentioned questions, this study, a case study research, designed a questionnaire and interviewed 9 scholarly publishers through social-technical network approach.
The research result shows that most publishers can maximize profit and handle stocking via traditional printing publish model. Hence, they are not willing to extend the use of POD. Cases that use POD to publish more publications are often supported by institutional environment or leader’s opinions. In addition, most publishers do not usually use POD in the manner of print on demand as some literature expected. In consideration of cost, they often print certain amount of books beforehand. Besides, publishers cannot sustain the operation of POD unless they limit the reprinting of out-of-print books with several conditions, such as operating POD printers by themselves, adopting make-to-order production, or supporting by other profit.
This study then discovers that some literature which advocate publishing academic publications by POD and e-Book publish models are inclined to be “technological determinism.” They tend to omit a lot of social and technical factors that academic publishers need to coordinate with in order to apply POD. In reality, different publishers may face with different situations, and they require corresponding supports respectively. In conclusion, when researchers observe the process of new technology entering an existing field, they should take both social and technical factors into account, in order to comprehensively analyze the key factors that improve or impede the dissemination of a new technology.
Subjects
按需印刷
隨選列印
學術出版
製版印刷
電子書
學術出版社
Type
thesis
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