Free Book-on-Demand
Service for Publishers

Dear Publisher:

The InstaBook Digital Bookstores Network is a new tool for both Publishers and Bookstores to satisfy the needs of their Customers. The InstaBook Network allows the Customer to request on-line a title from our growing stock of books from all over the world, and download it and print it on demand at their local bookstore.

This process is advantageous to:

The Customer, because it gives them instant and permanent access to tens of thousands of books which they could not get otherwise, at a price equal or lower than what they pay for a regular trade paperback. They save time and money. Forget shipping charges and weeks or months of waiting!

The Bookstores, because it allows them to increase their inventory exponentially without increasing their overhead. They increase sales and keep their customers coming back for more.

The Publisher, because it allows you to increase the shelf life of your titles without having to incur in additional expenses to keep such titles in-print and available. Moreover, the titles that you place in our network will increase the amount of your gross return per unit sold. Once it is approved and placed on the network, your books will be always available upon request.

And best of all, it is a Free Service.

We offer to Publishers all over the world our free Book On Demand service throughout our network of InstaBook Digital Bookstores.

How does it work?

First we need to clarify something: as with any new tool, the InstaBook Digital Bookstores Network makes certain requirements you need to understand.

An InstaBook Digital Bookstore is not a printing service: it is a Book On Demand service. The difference is huge. We do not charge Publishers a single cent to print their books: we charge the Customer of the bookstore who orders those books. Therefore our primary responsibility is to the Customer of the bookstore.

The InstaBook Digital Bookstores are operated by a bookstore employee that has other functions assigned. Consequently we have to limit the nature and type of the books that they will be printing and we have to make the operation as smooth and easy as possible. A bookstore employee doesn't have the time nor the inclination to print books according to your specs; he needs to be able to select the book from the on line store, and make a perfect-bound book with a few of clicks of the mouse. Our aim is to deliver on-site an excellent quality product that the bookstore Customer will be happy with. We need to do this as easy as possible.

To reach this goal we have standardized methods and procedures.

The first step is to make a different edition of your books. Meaning that you license the content to us, and we re-publish it according to our standards. We pay you a Licensing fee of 30% off the retail price (which in practical purposes is twice the return you are getting now on your standard editions), or a set fee that you request (you tell us how much you want to be paid per copy, and we pay it.)

Why do we make a different edition of your book? Because we need to make sure that the reproduction of your book anywhere in the world proceeds without glitches, and that it is of a uniform quality everywhere. We do not aim to reproduce or compete with your existing editions: since the perfect-bound book is produced on site to satisfy the bookstore's Customer, the end responsibility of the quality of the product is the bookstore's and ours, not yours. At InstaBook we don't make copies: each book is an original.

Another reason is that making an InstaBook Edition of your titles each printed volume will be easy to spot and therefore easy to be accounted for.

Then there is of course the matter of technology and human resources: although our technology allows for books to be made with any type of paper and cover stock and in any size, at the bookstore level this is not feasible for the reasons already mentioned. Therefore we limit the book sizes to 2: InstaBook Size (5.5” x 8.5”) and Full Size (8.5” x 11”).

Although we foresee the introduction of color pages sometime in the future --as soon as the printing costs on site will allow it--, at the present time we limit the contents of the books to black and white (or half-tones in case of photos). Covers are printed in full color, with a standard 100 lb. cover stock.

Even so, these limitations are relatively unimportant because we know that:

a.- You are selling content, nor paper: and

b.- The vast majority of books published in the world fall within those categories.

We know that not all of the books you publish will qualify to be included in the InstaBook Network, but those that do will find an efficient and secure new sales tool. You can use the InstaBook Network to extend the life of middle list and back list titles: or to test the appeal of new titles, or to make obscure titles available everywhere, or to make regional editions, or compilations, or customized school-packages... the possibilities are endless.

We understand that you are proud of your books, and would like to have them reproduced exactly according to your specs. But to be able to make use of the new sales tool, we ask you to remember that new technologies bring new challenges, but also new rewards.

More...

Copyright © InstaBook Corporation