E-book volumes are static. There is a surge in demand for printed books. Readers have discovered that you can give books as gifts, lend books to friends, sell them to others, or actually read a printed book years after acquisition without any device or software. And books always look good on a shelf.

The growth of printed books is based on two trends. The first is self-publishing. I went to an authors’ event recently and walked the aisles filled with tables of self-published books in all shapes and sizes. Self-publishing has been engendered by the second trend: on-demand printing (ODP). The concept of ODP has been around since the 1980s when Kodak and Xerox had toner-based printers that could print and bind in the same machine.

When I wrote my ?rst book in 1971, I asked the printer for 500 copies. The printer said that their minimum run was 5,000. “You can throw away 4,500 of them,” he said. In 1988, I consulted for the University of Vermont to set up an on-demand book facility. They linked to the Copyright Clearance Center so that content could be selected and then used in course materials sold in the campus bookstore. By 1992, the concept was catching on and by 1993, Indigo and Xeikon printed in full color.