Tips and Tricks
Print on Demand at SFU Bookstore
September 20, 2011
Over the summer, the SFU Bookstore installed an Espresso Book Machine (EBM) at their Burnaby campus location. Bookstore staff can print and bind a book for you within minutes, and at affordable prices.
The finished books are paperbacks, and can be anywhere from 50 to 750 pages.
Costs are currently $0.03 per page with a $5 setup charge. The bookstore has provided a guidelines sheet to help you set up your file for printing.
It's not just for course texts: You could also print up a copy of your thesis for your personal use or as a gift for your parents (300 pages x $.03 + $5 = $14 for a 300-page thesis with colour cover).
For a video of the machine in action:
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For example, a book, with 321 pages, would cost me $14.63 to print using the EBM. On a retail sale price of 19.94, my return would be $5.32. This leaves me very little room for any coupon or discount sales incentives.
My current cost on the same title is only $7.96 ($4.71 print plus $3.25 shipping) through CreateSpace. That, plus the comparative high cost of set-up fees make the EBM technology financially unattractive at this time.
My question is, do you foresee any time in the near future when the price of placing a book with the EBM method will become cost-effective to me?
I suspect that the SFU Bookstore's sales model is to produce single-run books directly for students, faculty and staff, not for resale, as you're doing, so the Bookstore probably wouldn't have a good answer for you.
I just did a price comparison on doing a 300-page thesis through CreateSpace (https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/), and it would be $7.50 US + $6.99 shipping for a 300-page thesis (compared to the $14 through the bookstore), so there isn't a saving on the cost for a single-print book.