5 Ways Large Organizations Can Benefit from Lulu's Book Solutions
The book supply chain has changed drastically in recent years. Part of that was, of course, the pandemic. But emerging social trends, an emphasis on owned audiences, and improvements in technology have played a huge part too.
In the last ten years, paper and material costs have risen, fulfillment services have experienced unexpected delays, sometimes due to labor issues, and unpredictable demand has made traditional publishing fragile. For many publishers, the economics that once justified large offset print runs are no longer reliable.
It’s always been a simple equation: you need about as many copies as you can sell. The gamble that publishing houses would historically take for their authors would be to predict the demand.
Mess up on that prediction, and you’re stuck with excess stock and eventually write-offs. Those books will end up being pulped, and the cost to print, ship, and warehouse them will be completely lost. Underestimate demand and you’ve got lost sales and frustrated customers.
In the old model, publishers and content creators would need to commit to a large, expensive order from an offset printer, manage the logistics of storing those books, and handle shipping to bookstores, libraries, retailers, and individual shoppers.
Print-on-Demand Is a Strategic Advantage
Okay, so that H2 right there? ChatGPT wrote it. The robot also wrote this one for me:
“Publishers need a model that absorbs volatility rather than amplifying it.”
I had prompted it to help me outline sections for this post based on a few sentences and a stack of keywords. It decided to give those two lines as a footnote with the comment, you might find these useful. Thanks, ChatGPT.
Because yeah, it’s kind of a high-school-essay type of statement. But in this instance, the robot is right.
For a very long time (thanks mostly to Amazon and KDP), print-on-demand has been viewed as an access point to publishing for authors who couldn’t get a deal with a ‘real’ publishing house. No need to edit or pay for a print run—just sell books online as an ebook or printed on-demand.
In that capacity, print-on-demand is pretty amazing. The entire publishing industry has changed because authors and creators no longer have any gatekeepers. Anyone with an audience can turn a book into a source of long-term revenue. Well, usually a few books, but you get the point.
The ease of access and low overhead cost, coupled with enormous improvements in digital printing hardware, transformed print-on-demand. The entire industry has shifted from a niche way to sell to niche audiences into a parallel service to complement offset printing.
How Publishers Use Print-on-Demand
Many (many) years ago, I was on the editorial board for a literary magazine. We had been publishing on a website monthly, but our readers were asking about print editions. So we started exploring doing a quarterly. As you might imagine, this small journal did not have 10,000+ readers, so a print run was out of the question.
Then someone mentioned print-on-demand options. Just like that, we were in business. The journal, to this day, puts out four editions a year and prints them on-demand for readers.
Publishers are using print-on-demand to do similar things. They can take on authors with a smaller audience and not risk losing a substantial amount on their print run. Print-on-demand scales with actual demand.
I think we can all agree that publishers opening the doors to more authors and creators is a good thing. Print-on-demand will give them the flexibility to do just that. Today, publishers are beginning to move toward hybrid strategies where POD operates alongside offset printers and integrates seamlessly into their retail and distribution systems.
Lulu’s Flexible Print-on-Demand Solutions
When I first joined the Lulu team over 10 years ago, we were largely known as an indie self-publishing company. A smaller version of Amazon’s KDP (which was CreateSpace way back then); Lulu was among a handful of self-publishers turning the industry on its head.
Here’s a look at the Lulu website back in 2012, when Lulu was established as one of the top three options for self-published authors.
Doesn’t that just scream self-publishing company?
Today, we’re still offering the same opportunities:
- Publishing is still free
- You still control your work uploaded to Lulu
- We’re still a viable way to reach more readers
Self-publishing revolutionized how individual authors and the traditional publishing industry operated. Two key things led to this:
- No gatekeepers preventing people from publishing and selling their books
- No massive, offset print runs were necessary
That second point is one that, if you’re an author, might seem like old news. Print-on-demand costs more per book to print, but allows for one-off printings. Offset printers usually need at least 10,000 copies in the order for it to be profitable for the printer. Most authors will never sell that many copies of a single book. Ever.
But there’s something critical we (by which I mean the wise leadership team at Lulu) realized after literal years of research and conversations with publishing and printing experts. While authors understood the value of print-on-demand, businesses did not.
Businesses that sell books or use them as part of their other offerings (think coursework, training manuals, and the like) were still relying on large print runs or using even more expensive, lower-quality options. Largely because when they look at companies like Lulu, they see a self-publisher. A bookseller. A place for authors who can’t land publishing deals.
Which, we are still. But at the core, Lulu is a global print-on-demand network built on APIs and ecommerce integrations.
Our infrastructure allows businesses and publishers to treat print as software: programmable, distributed, and responsive to demand in real time. Flexibility is where print-on-demand shines. Lulu is easily the most flexible option in the world for small, complex, or highly variable book printing.
Solving the Biggest Publisher Pain Points
No, we don’t have the perfect formula for bestsellers or some secret to promoting new books. But Lulu does have practical, technology driven solutions to some of the costly problems modern publishers face.
For commercial printers and publishers, Lulu acts as an agile partner, able to handle overflow or sudden demand with ease. We can take on jobs that would otherwise disrupt press schedules or involve a substantial investment upfront.
1. Reducing Risk While Protecting Unit Economics
Inventory risk is one of the biggest drains on publishers’ profitability. They have to pay upfront for a print run based on the quantity they believe they can sell. This is long before demand is proven and even longer before the book has started to earn revenue.
With POD, books are printed based entirely on demand. That might mean printing each copy as it sells so books don’t need to be warehoused, or it could mean printing a few hundred copies to keep a small stock on hand but not risk the overhead of storing thousands of books. This shift alone frees up cash for businesses and reduces the financial impact of forecasting errors. Importantly, this doesn’t require sacrificing quality or brand control. Lulu offers over 3,200 different product combinations, with the most common inks, paper, and sizes readily available.
This actually leads to print-on-demand supporting per-unit margins that are competitive with offset printing. Once warehousing, returns, and write-offs are factored in, print-on-demand is almost always about as expensive to the business per book.
The result is a more stable, predictable cost structure.
2. Global Manufacturing Without Global Warehousing
Selling internationally has traditionally required international inventory. For a big book release, that might mean an offset order comes from China, is shipped to a variety of warehouses around the world, and stock for bookstores or orders will be shipped from those regional warehouses. Complex logistics, right? And all of this costs the business money up front, well before a single book has sold.
Lulu’s distributed manufacturing model flips that approach. Books are printed closer to the reader from one of our facilities (we’ve got 10 printers in seven countries) and routed based on destination. Publishers can expand into new regions without local inventory, customs complexity, or long shipping times. For books printed on-demand, warehousing might even be necessary.
For publishers selling globally, Lulu can function as a regional POD arm. The result is faster delivery, lower shipping costs, and a better customer experience, all without adding operational overhead.
3. Backlist Revival and OOP Recovery with Print-on-Demand
Backlist access is one of the clearest use cases for print-on-demand. Publisher catalogs with dozens or hundreds of titles that are no longer strong sellers can be brought back into distribution without any financial risk.
Traditional publishers, for most of their existence, have relied on a large upfront order to sell new books. Once that book has been out for a year or more, it moves to the publisher’s backlist. They might sell a few copies a month for a few more years, slowly working through the stock leftover from their initial purchase.
The problem arises when a book that’s been out for some time has a surge in demand. Say from a movie or TV adaptation or viral content from the author. If the abrupt demand exceeds the books they still have in the warehouse. If there aren’t enough on hand, the publisher has to choose between missing out on potential sales or purchasing another large offset run.
That’s when Lulu swoops in to save the day. On-demand printing makes it completely reasonable to order a short run or sell copies one at a time. Printing technology has advanced to a point that Toner and InkJet printing is on par with offset methods. And Lulu’s simple process for uploading files makes it easy for publishers to get the exact quantity they need in days rather than weeks or months.
Instead of choosing which titles deserve to stay alive, publishers can let the market decide.
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4. Direct-to-Consumer Without Becoming a Fulfillment Company
This is the idea that all print-on-demand dropshipping businesses are built on. You can offer a product on your website and when it sells, create and ship it to that customer. You never touch that product. Never warehouse it either.
Direct-to-consumer also comes with access to first-party customer data, something increasingly vital.
For businesses and publishers, offering books on-demand is a means to leverage the best things about direct-to-consumer sales to test new authors. You can test unique or custom formats, offer collections or special editions, or simply give a new author a chance without committing to expensive print runs.
This advantage of print-on-demand is not being as heavily leveraged by businesses and publishers as the others. Yet. I would be surprised if we don’t see a continuing increase in publishers particularly using POD to test new authors or formats.
5. Personalization and Experimentation at Scale
I just touched on experimentation. But the more common use case for print-on-demand is personalization.
Personalized books are popular right now and only getting more popular. Consider My Forever Books, a company that turns old text message chains into a printed keepsake. A uniquely simple idea that works because they were able to use Lulu’s API to send a unique file to print for each and every order.
Other popular customizations include name insertions, dedications, custom editions, and creator-led personalization. Each of these can significantly increase conversion rates and average order value. Or potentially attract new customers who specifically seek out these kinds of personalized books.
Through API-driven workflows (like Lulu’s API), personalization becomes scalable rather than manual.
Why the Future of Publishing Demands Flexibility
The future of publishing isn’t about choosing one manufacturing model over another. It’s about building a flexible infrastructure that adapts to demand, absorbs risk, and supports business scaling. Publishers who embrace change will have a competitive advantage—not just in cost, but in resilience and flexibility.
Lulu helps publishers stabilize operations as a stopgap printer, scale globally with international printers, and grow revenue by always ensuring demand can be met.
