MIT Press, Edwards Brothers in POD Deal

The MIT Press launched a new on-demand publishing program last month in partnership with Edwards Brothers. Under the MIT Press Classics Series, about 300 formerly out-of-print titles are now available through POD, and MIT Press marketing director Vicki Lepine hopes to have approximately a total of 1,000 titles available by the end of the year.

The POD series will feature titles from all of MIT Press's publishing segments, including science, engineering and political science. The press is sending e-mails to customers who have expressed interest in a title that had been out of print, informing them that the book is now available in a POD edition. MIT Press will also promote the series in its subject catalogues as well as in its seasonal catalogues where the entire list will be printed in fine print. Lepine said MIT Press is pricing the books between seven cents and 10 cents per page.

This is Edwards Brothers' third POD venture with a publisher. Unlike agreements with the University of Chicago and Roman & Littlefield, where Edwards installed a machine on its partners' premises, Edwards is doing all the printing of MIT Press titles in its Ann Arbor, Mich., plant. MIT Press is providing Edwards with its titles already scanned and converted to PDFs by Hewlett-Packard. Donnelley checks the files and adds metadata information before sending the final files to Edwards. Once an order is received by MIT Press, it is immediately forwarded to Edwards, which then prints and ships the title. "It's pretty seamless," said Lepine.

While Lepine expects the vast majority of the titles in the series to be printed as a single unit, the press is prepared to do some short-run printings of titles that prove to be popular. "Working with Edwards gives us that flexibility," said Lepine.

Edwards Brothers CEO John Edwards said he hopes to do more deals similar to the one with MIT Press that takes advantage of the printer's Digital Book Center capabilities. The center was first established in 2000 to give Edwards improved capability in the ultra-short–run market. "We're talking to others" about using some aspect of Edwards's digital services, Edwards said. The Digital Center accounts for less than 10% of Edwards's sales, but for more than 10% of the number of titles produced by the company, and the latter percentage continues to grow. Edwards, which is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year, had sales of $80 million in 2002 and 800 employees.