Leading Publishers Stay in Stock on Amazon.com with BookSurge’s Print on Demand Service

BookSurge LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN), announced agreements with major publishers to use BookSurge’s Print on Demand service to make their current, backlist, out-of-print and large print books available to millions of customers on Amazon.com and through other distribution channels. Participating publishers now include HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Springer, Gale, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Princeton University Press, SAGE Publications, Kensington, Hal Leonard, LexisNexis, and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA).

The Print on Demand service also enables publishers to improve the availability of their midlist and frontlist titles on Amazon.com by combining on-demand distribution with physical inventory distribution. The service eliminates inventory risk for publishers because they no longer have to carry inventory for these titles. Titles offered through Print on Demand are available to Amazon.com customers at the fastest delivery available on Amazon.com: customers who choose overnight shipping can receive their books the very next day, often less than 24 hours from when they placed their order.

“The Print on Demand service is ideal for publishers who want to bring back out-of-print or backlist titles as well as maintain in-stock availability of midlist and frontlist titles,” said David Symonds, general manager, BookSurge. “Printing books as customers order them, without carrying inventory, benefits both publishers and customers. Publishers can now maintain in-stock availability on Amazon.com, which improves sales. And customers can now order titles that would otherwise be unavailable and receive them the next day.”

For more general information on the BookSurge Print on Demand program, please visit http://www.booksurge.com/publisher/BEA. Publishers interested in joining the Print on Demand program, please email PODinfo@booksurge.com.

Partner Quotes

“Printing books in a larger print format has traditionally been hard to justify economically because they are generally too costly to reprint except for the very best-selling titles,” said Brian Murray, president, HarperCollins. “Now, the attractive economics of Print on Demand combined with Amazon.com’s automated discovery and recommendation features make it possible to release a wide variety of large print editions, including our own Luxe editions.”

“We have a large catalog of titles that have been difficult to keep in print using traditional offset printing models,” said Mike Hays, president, McGraw-Hill. “BookSurge has helped us identify the titles with the most potential demand and digitize them through the Print on Demand program, keeping them available indefinitely. We believe this will be a very profitable way to increase both the size of our in-print catalog and our overall sales.”

“Maintaining in-stock availability on Amazon.com is important for driving sales,” said Paul Major, director of stock planning U.S. and UK, Oxford University Press. “Through BookSurge’s Print on Demand program, we can maintain in-stock availability for our large catalog of niche, backlist and international titles with limited or no stock, which would otherwise be practically impossible to achieve. And we no longer need to print and store several years of inventory in order to get a low unit cost on printing. The financials are completely reversed with inventory-free fulfillment, so now we only pay for printing the books that have already sold.”

“The flexibility of BookSurge’s Print on Demand service makes it possible for us to cost-effectively offer our new Reading Corner book series,” said Liana Ghent, executive director, International Step by Step Association. “Each book is in full color and written and illustrated by international educators to promote literacy and improve children’s lives around the world. Print on Demand is the perfect solution for us because it not only allows us to print what we need when we need it, but also in any one of the eleven languages in which the books are available.”

About BookSurge

BookSurge LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), is a pioneer in self-publishing and Print on Demand services offering state-of-the-art print on demand services to the book publishing industry.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as health and personal care, jewelry and watches, gourmet food, sports and outdoors, apparel and accessories, books, music, DVDs, electronics and office, toys and baby, and home and garden.