Arnaud wrote:Ichiro wrote:I don't know what it would take for them to move to Print On Demand, but I'm sure it's more complex than simply thinking they'd like to do it. I'd dearly love for Print On Demand to be a possibility with them, it's impossible to get hold of physical volumes for their Tamil and Cantonese courses without paying stupid prices. Of course, even if they do move to Print On Demand, they might not want to cannibalise sales of their newer courses where they have multiple generations in the same language, or choose to be associated any longer with some of the content in their older courses. The Tamils in their Tamil course are perpetually penniless, for example, and infrequently try and cadge money off each other. Someone might take offense.
I asked the question on their facebook page, about the POD. They answered "the book would be too expensive for the learner". I didn't insist. They simply don't want to do it.
The book would be too expensive for the learner if they are trying to keep the same profit margin as they have by having bulk print runs. Typically, the publisher would get about 12% of the cover cost of a book, from which they have to pay cost of business and make a profit. For a POD book run, the publisher might get 3% if they are lucky. So they'd have to either jack up the price to something stupid to cover all their costs, or make a loss on the POD books.
So it makes sense for them to ignore POD.