Printing your Catholic product on demand versus printing small runs
Pros and cons of each method and tips for what to do
In this guide, I’m going to give a brief overview of the various ways to print your product, a few tips, and paid subscribers will find out all the printers I personally use for each of my products!
What is print on demand?
With Print on Demand, or POD, your product is printed, packaged, and shipped for you and sent directly to your customer. Examples include Amazon KDP, Bookvault, Printful, and Printed Mint. It can be a great option if you want to streamline the process, avoid purchasing and storing inventory up front, and have someone else ship for you. But, like all things, it comes with pros and cons.
Print on demand pros
No inventory; no packing orders; low cost; low risk.
Great to test the market to see which products sell best.
Easy to make changes to your product without needing to do a reprint. You can typically upload a new file with the updated changes.
You do not need to find a printing company and pay for hundreds of units up front. This is great if you are on a budget.
You don’t need to buy packaging materials, print labels, or ship your own products.
If you decide you want to have products on hand, you can usually order directly from the printer.
Print on demand cons
Printing can be of lesser quality.
Many print on demand options come out to a higher cost per unit than if you were to print in bulk. This may mean needing a higher retail price on your product to account for this, lower profit margins, and a harder time pricing for wholesale.
You are usually limited when it comes to bindings, paper options, materials, and specialty printing techniques.
Not all POD sites are the same. Some run like a marketplace (Amazon KDP) where you don’t need your own website. Others simply provide the backend technology, but you’ll still need your own website.
There will be a fee or percentage of your retail price that is taken for this service.
Since someone else is doing the shipping, you don’t have your eyes on the product that is being sent to customers. If the product arrives damaged or is printed incorrectly, this can hurt your business reputation.
What does it mean to print small runs?
Alternatively, you might decide to print small or even large runs up front, in bulk. An example would be printing and paying for 200 books at once.
Pros to printing small runs
Printing quality tends to be higher.
You have many more options and creative control when it comes to paper weights, materials, bindings, and specialty printing techniques.
When you purchase in bulk, you can often bring the cost per product down to a more reasonable price.
You have more quality control as you get the products first and can make sure nothing damaged is being sent to your customer.
Cons to printing small runs
It costs more money up front.
Many printers will have minimum orders. E.g., you may need to buy 500 t-shirts at once in order to place an order.
It is a greater risk, especially if you don’t know how well your product will sell.
Not all printers are created equal. It can take several tries before you find the right printer.
Large boxes of products, especially if being shipped from far away, can sometimes arrive damaged in transit.
You’ll need to buy packaging materials, print labels, and ship the products to customers yourself.
If printing overseas, you’ll encounter some additional logistics to manage.
If you need to make a change to your design file, you may need to wait until you sell out of your current stock or make the costly decision to do a reprint.
For books, it can be more challenging to make your book widely available for distribution to book stores.
What should you do?
I wish I could tell you, but honestly, it depends. It depends on the product, how many products you want to launch, how expensive it is to produce the products, the quality of the products you desire, etc.
Here are a few general tips:
For authors, your life will be much easier if you can upload to a POD site like Amazon KDP. The Alliance of Independent Authors, who I turn to for advice on this, recommends (at the time of this article) publishing print books to Amazon KDP Print, IngramSpark, and Bookvault. Just know, this won’t work for every type of book.
Print on demand can be a great way to start, especially if you are on a low budget. Test out which products sell really well and which ones don’t. Then double down on your bestsellers! Consider finding a printer that can print those in bulk.
Do your research! Ask for quotes, product samples, and proofs.
What printers do I recommend?
I’ve got a whole list of printers in my directories. Paid subscribers can find out:
Which printers I’ve used and recommend.
I’ll even tell you exactly where each of the following products in my shop were printed!
Printers that have been recommended to me. This includes overseas printers for children’s books.
This list will save you SO much time! It’s mainly for books, but does have some crossover with other paper products.