There are three more advantages to using print-on-demand as your method of publishing:

Your Stocks Won’t Run Out

If you are publishing on demand then you can never run out of book stocks. Publish one, publish several thousand, it's up to you. For new authors, it can be difficult to assess what demand will be for their book. It may be a complete success, it may be an utter flop and you can’t know that until you publish. POD is a way of testing the water, so to speak, to see whether there is sufficient demand and whether you should publish more copies or not.

Let’s say, for argument's sake, that you use POD to publish 20 copies of your book. You have a list of friends and family who have been patiently waiting and most of those copies are snapped up by them. You’ve got a couple of copies left – what do you do? Print more. The files are already there, you just place the order with the printers and in less than a week you’ve got your books. Conversely, if you are left with 15 of the original print run then you won’t feel bad about only having 20 printed.

You Can Update Your Book As Needed

This is one of the biggest advantages. You can add or change the information in your book whenever you want. Let’s assume you’ve now sold 150 copies but you’ve suddenly found an error in the book. Update it, send the new file to the printers and away you go. It’s probably best to start with just a few copies, get a bit of feedback first and make changes as needed before you order a large print run.

Spend Wisely

Because you are only printing what you need, when you need it, you can keep much better track of what’s what, not just in terms of how many to print but in terms of what it's costing you. No longer do self-published authors need to set vast amounts of money aside to pay for a print run; a small budget can take you a long way. All you need is a plan on how your money will be spent.

Is your focus on design? Professional editing? Then have a smaller print run to start with. If your focus is on getting your book into color, then more money can be diverted to the publishing pot. The best thing about POD is that you can publish to your budget.

There is no doubt that print-on-demand is efficient and it is convenient. It is now one of the most up and coming forms of publishing, especially for first-time authors. Even the big names use it now, mainly because it is so flexible.

At the end of the day, your manuscript represents many hours of work, days, weeks, months; in some cases, years. Seeing it through to the publishing stage is something to be proud of so make sure you publish it the way you want to publish it.