Oftentimes we hear that printing more will save you a considerable amount of money since printing double the number of your orders would not cost twice as much. While this maybe true, there are instances when printing less through on demand printing could save you money.

1. Control your inventory costs

When producing bulk materials for your marketing or advertising campaigns, you tend to produce more than you need. These “extra” copies of your prints are then stored in your facilities to be used when a certain need arises again.

The problem with this is two fold. First, you need a storage facility to store all these prints. Second, if your prints are stored too long, then they may need to be updated rendering them useless. Printing on demand allows you to avoid these problems by giving you the option of printing a set number of prints. Also, by allowing you to specify the time you want your prints to be done, you can continually replenish your prints whenever you want.



2. Maintaining availability of your books

In book publishing, printing on demand is used to make sure that a high selling book remains available in the market even when the initial print run has already been sold out but the second run of prints is not yet available. Printing on demand allows you to buy the time you need when waiting for the second run to be finished.

On demand printing is also used to make sure that older titles of books remain available. Bulk printing these books is not advisable since the demand for it is very low, however the cumulative sales of these titles maybe significant.

3. Minimize waste in your small campaigns

With on demand print services, you no longer need to print in bulk so whenever you have your small market campaigns, you can limit the number of prints that you produce. For example, when you are testing your product in a small community and need only a few prints for your information campaign, have them printed on demand and control how many prints you have. You not only saved on the printing cost but also minimized the number of prints you wasted.

4. When you have a niche market

Print on demand is also used to print and reprint materials that have a specific audience. Academic books often fall into this category since they have a high selling price but limited sales opportunities. Whereas printing these materials in traditional printing methods is impractical, having them printed on demand can assure you of having these books printed at an affordable cost.

5. Reduce the risk

With on demand print services, you can reduce the risk of printing more copies of what you need than necessary. This is especially true in publishing books that are expected to have large sales but short sales life (such as celebrity biographies or accounts about certain events). Printing these titles through on demand will allow you to take advantage of the sales opportunity you have without going overboard. One common strategy is printing a relatively small number of prints and turning to on demand printing when you run short on copies.



Thanks to Adan Ines for contributing this article to our printing blog:

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