Lausanne World Pulse – International Publishing – Beyond the Printed Book: Redefining Publishing in the Twenty-first Century

By Renato Fleischner
October / November 2011

Collaborative solutions exist today that eliminate geographic barriers. In many countries, it’s possible to print abroad and harness the most innovative solutions available. The New Living Bible was edited in Brazil, paginated in Denmark, and printed in China.

POD
Mundo Cristão sells more than 3.2 million copies annually. However, we (like all publishers) do not have the budget to keep copies of all our titles stored in a warehouse.

Print on demand (POD) enables readers to purchase older titles at a reasonable cost. A typical print run for a reprinted book requires at least one thousand copies to be cost effective. However, this title may typically remain for a year or more in the warehouse. When publishers have up to three hundred titles in their backlists, they barely have funds to reprint a few titles.

Using a POD solution means printing as few copies as you like. The individual book cost is higher, but the total amount invested is much less. This means the title would cost fifty percent more than a current bestseller, but we have found that many readers are willing to pay more for it.

We are also considering a partnership with a print-on-demand supplier in the U.S. to serve the Portuguese-speaking market there. We intend to give these readers a better and faster service with reasonable prices. If this works, we will include bestsellers as well.

Ebooks
We have started to convert our titles to digital. The ebook market is still small in Brazil, but we are testing its viability. In the United States ebooks comprise four to seven percent of titles among the largest publishers. There are approximately one million ebook titles available in English, but just four thousand in Portuguese. Conversion costs from print to ebooks are steep, and we are trying to find cheaper methods. The Brazilian government is about to reduce taxes on e-readers and we expect to have new users soon.

The ebook is also an alternative for reaching Portuguese-speaking readers throughout the world. Ebook prices are generally twenty-five to thirty percent less than print titles. Regardless of the uncertainty of the size of the ebook market, we should not exclude ourselves from it.

We have also developed an application for the iPad, although we haven’t launched it yet. Again, the idea is try the technology and test the market. We would use a public domain title and price it as low as possible. The ebook would have video, audio, and interactive tools.

Using a smart combination of these new technologies is the only way for publishers to survive and grow in such uncertain scenarios.

We should not dismiss nor blame the changing technologies. Instead, we must thank God for additional tools to broadcast the good news.

Renato Fleischner is editorial and production director at Mundo Cristão Publishers, Brazil’s largest independent Christian publishing house. He studied journalism and has an MBA in marketing. He has worked in the publishing industry for twenty-two years, nine of those at Mundo Cristão.