Fill in's, Financials, & Failings

While in the process of doing my most recent update to the POD Database, I discovered I now have ninety Fee-Based Print-on-Demand (POD) Publishing Services listed. Ninety. Wow. (Just a few more to the triple digits-whoo-hoo lol).

But more than the number of companies, I suppose what got me thinking was when I did a few offhand guesstimations with the reasoning that if each company had at one point attained a mere minimum number of one hundred authors each, it would mean that roughly almost ten thousand books were published this way over the last five years--ballpark a thousand or so...

And when I deliberated further (on a whim), averaging the cost of publishing each book at about $500 a pop (which is on the low end, I know), it came out to right around four and a half million dollars spent over that same period. Four million plus--BAM!!

Now four million is but a drop in the bucket (when in perspective to an industry as a whole) but regardless four million is not a number to ignore either in the least.

But anyway, onto my last point which is (unofficially) at least one-third of these businesses for one reason or another have gone out of business since I started keeping track. That's roughly a thirty percent failure rate (not including the mergers and moratoriums) which to me proves that not everyone can survive.

Yes, it's easy to start up a company like this and yes there is a customer base BUT the longer the business itself remains static and/or ignores the desires/needs of it's customers, the higher the risk of it becoming outmoded in an industry traditionally known for its 'revolutionary spirit.'

Just something to think about...

FWIW

dehanna