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Diggory Press was what is commonly referred to as a “POD” or Publish/Print on Demand company, which prints a new copy of a book to fill an order — as opposed to a standard publishing model, which prints a “run” of copies with traditional offset printing, and then sells the inventory (or not).
The advantages of POD are fairly obvious: increased speed and efficiency, with less waste and expense by the publishing company (though it is usually more expensive per unit to print an individual book than a mass-produced run). On the author’s side, one can expect far more independence, control and a larger share of the royalties. Older or more obscure titles are far less likely to become unavailable (the dreaded “out of print” online slots syndrome!), and titles with uncertain market potential are far less of a risk for the publisher.
On the other hand, the darker side of PODs are “Vanity Presses”, though there are subtle differences between the two concepts. Vanity presses are not selective; they will print whatever they are paid to print, so they carry little weight or prestige, potentially making it more unlikely for the author to develop a relationship with a respectable publisher. Even worse, vanity presses are often unscrupulous operations, taking customers’ money and disappearing, or misleading and exploiting authors in completely legal and protected ways (a similar situation exists between good and bad examples of an online casino USA).
In either case, marketing and distribution is a completely separate matter; while a traditional publishing house will often handle such things, PODs either leave such things up to the author, or offer a range of optional ‘packages’ that include some form of further involvement for an additional cost.
It is not too far from the truth to assume that any given company referring to themselves as a POD simply desires to distance themselves from the derogatory “vanity press” label (one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter, and so on). In the debate over Diggory Press, you can assume that anyone who refers to the company as a vanity press is probably among the opposition, while using the term POD may indicate either support or simple objectivity.