Amazon.co.jp today announced a new Print-on-Demand (POD) program for Books, which dramatically expands the selection of titles available to customers and offers publishers a cost-effective way to make the broadest possible range of their authors’ titles available.
Using POD technology, Amazon.co.jp can rapidly print and ship a single book in response to a customer’s order. Titles in the program will always be in-stock, allowing customers to benefit from Amazon.co.jp’s shipping offers such as Amazon Prime and Same Day Delivery. There are currently over 600,000 titles available for printing from Amazon.co.jp.
Amazon.co.jp POD provides a cost-effective way for publishers to offer titles for sale to customers in Japan. POD will in particular help foreign book publishers who want to sell both their backlist and frontlist into the Japanese market without the expense and risk of overseas shipping and local inventory. POD is also a great solution for out-of-print works, niche titles, custom books, foreign language editions and alternative formats, such as large print.Leading publishers from around the world are working with Amazon.co.jp to offer their titles via its POD service, including Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, British Library, Taylor & Francis and Springer.”We hope to bring hundreds of thousands of books to Amazon.co.jp’s customers that might never have otherwise been available,” said Kazufumi Watanabe, Vice President of Media at Amazon. “Especially in Japan, foreign language books were hard to keep in stock due to their relatively lower demand and longer lead times. By introducing POD, publishers will be enabled to keep all their titles perpetually in stock at Amazon.co.jp. Such an innovative new solution will be a significant benefit to both the publishing industry and our customers.””We are pleased to add our U.S. POD titles to this innovative program,” said Tom Stouras, Vice President of Supply Chain and Sales Operations at Macmillan. “Being able to print these books locally, through the CreateSpace platform, will get the books to the readers more quickly and supports Macmillan’s environmental initiatives.””We are pleased that Amazon.co.jp has been producing Springer STM Books in Print-On-Demand in Japan,” said Ryoji Fukada, Managing Director, Springer Japan KK. “Currently Springer publishes more than 5,000 new English-language titles every year. Since many of these titles concern new scientific information, it is crucial for our readers to be able to obtain them as soon as possible. Using POD, our books will reach our readers faster.”For a limited time, Amazon.co.jp will provide free setup for publishers with POD-ready PDF files. Amazon.co.jp is also offering competitive manufacturing rates as part of its comprehensive solution. For more information, pricing and details on the Print-on-Demand program, please contact podjp@amazon.com.
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