MacWorld Expo Review

[hrj]

Yesterday I made my annual Mac-geek pilgrimage to the MacWorld Expo in SF, in company with the usual suspects (esp. scotica). While I'm not immediately in the market for any of the hot new products, I did spend some time fondling the new Macbook Air and proclaim it eminently fondlable. The only major purchase I ended up getting was the upgrade to the Leopard operating system, although I fell slightly in lust with a project/contacts organization system that actually looks like my brain feels. (The name is, in fact, something like "Your Brain".) I lusted after several assorted pieces of luggage, all of which more or less duplicate functions that I already have luggage for, so they were safe to lust after.

And while in the middle of checking out one of the various POD (that's Print On Demand for the non-writerly readers)) companies, I suddenly had the belated flash of insight that the solution to getting Harpy Publications back up and running is to switch to a POD model with a company that handles all the order fulfillment. Since I'm primarily dealing with people who know the publications exist and simply want to obtain them, rather than a situation where I'm trying to go out and promote them to an unknowing public, this is pretty much an ideal solution. It does mean that I'd need to transform my literal paste-ups into pdf format, but that's a lot less effort than doing order fulfillment out of my living room. Of course, the POD solution doesn't cover the various songbooks -- specifically Dreamer and Songbook Pusher -- that wouldn't get reprinted even if I managed to sell out of the existing copies. But the historic stuff -- including some of the pamphlet-sized items -- could all be set up for POD. I think I've identified one of my projects for the year. A big advantage of leaving the printing and order fulfillment to a 3rd party is that I don't have to deal with a resale license or filling out sales tax forms. And a brief check of sample pricing indicates that the production costs are comparable to or lower than the run-them-off-at-the-xerox-shop costs.

Why I didn't twig on this idea long ago is a mystery to me.

Comments

[julesjones]

Yup, there are niche markets where an honest POD house like Lulu is actually the right way to go. Keeping back catalogue in print is one of them.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

And this isn't even a case of "back catalogue" -- this is stuff that I was always the publisher for (although also the author for much of it) and it's simply a matter of changing the printer from the local xerox shop to something like Lulu. So to a large extent, this is making the product more respectable, not less.