Amazon is expanding it’s services on the books-on-demand market in order to increase revenue by eliminating out-of-print commercial titles. Already Amazon has a huge digital archive of books that is uses at its “Search Inside the Book” technology and very well established partnerships with publishers. This gives Amazon two significant advantages against its competitors:
- Amazon will be able to offer almost every book ever printed
- Amazon is able to reduce the stock it keeps
Such services also create new markets as it can be used by smaller publishers and authors who don’t have access to the traditional publishing business, a famous one is Lulu.com. The books-on-demand market is expected to almost double in the next two years and Amazon is in place to use its advanced technology as an advantage in order to be the first to provide this service. Amazon bought in April 2005 printing-on-demand company Booksurge and in 2001 made a deal with Adobe to distribute ebooks.
The deal is for Hewlett-Packard to setup digital presses and advanced controlling equipment for Amazon in the USA. This is a major milestone in Hewlett-Packard’s plans to compete further against Xerox in the market of printing and not just printer manufacturing and distribution.
Digital printing seems to be the publisher’s future as it allows printing in smaller batches and thus better control of the printing cost and delivery time. The ability to control and change the content easily extends the potential markets into various sectors such as the direct mail business.
Read HP’s press release.
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