Springer Science+Business Media (Springer) has signed an agreement with CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com group of companies, which will make Springer's paperback book catalogue and front-, mid- and backlist available via print-on-demand (POD) in the US. In addition to moving a significant amount of its paperback selection to POD, Springer will also supply many new paperback titles via POD only. A large number of hardcover titles are being converted to paperback for inclusion, and Springer will also make new large-print paperback editions of some of its most popular selections available via POD. Springer is the world's leading publisher of scientific and business books, and is among the world's largest publishers overall. CreateSpace is a leader in manufacture on-demand services for independent content creators, publishers, film studios and labels.
Syed Hasan, Springer's President STM Sales Americas said, "Springer, as the largest book publisher in the STM sector, has played an innovative role in the development of STM eBooks, and this shift to an inventory-free distribution model using print-on-demand is the next logical step for the future of book publishing. The convenience for our customers and the obvious economic advantages made this an easy decision to make."
All of Springer's books will remain continuously available, ensuring that titles will never be out-of-stock. In addition, the development of the POD model enables publishers to economize on inventory and shipping costs associated with getting inventory to retailers.
"Springer, a leader in fostering communication within the scientific community, required a more flexible printing solution than traditional offset methods typically provide," said David Symonds, general manager - POD, CreateSpace. "Springer selected the CreateSpace print-on-demand solution to help them transition to a more flexible, customizable, inventory-free supply chain."
With CreateSpace Print-On-Demand, Springer's titles can be manufactured and shipped to customers on the same day they are ordered. Springer's print-on-demand titles are also eligible for Amazon's popular shipping programs, including Free Super Saver Shipping and Amazon Prime, as well as enrollment in Amazon's Search Inside the Book program.
"This is great news for customers ordering through Amazon.com. With its new inventory-free print-on-demand initiatives, Springer is not only expanding the selection of titles available to our customers, but it is also ensuring all of the titles they want are always in-stock and ready to be shipped to them in a time-efficient manner," said Russell Grandinetti, Vice President, Books, Amazon.
About Springer
Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) is a leading global scientific publisher, delivering quality content through innovative information products and services . The company is also a trusted provider of local-language professional publications in Europe, especially in Germany and the Netherlands. In the science, technology and medicine (STM) sector, the group publishes around 2,000 journals and more than 6,500 new books a year, as well as the largest STM eBook Collection worldwide. Springer has operations in about 20 countries in Europe, the USA, and Asia, and more than 5,000 employees. In 2008, it generated annual sales of around EUR 880 million.
About CreateSpace
CreateSpace is a leader in manufacture on-demand services for independent content creators, publishers, film studios and labels. CreateSpace provides inventory-free, physical distribution of Books, CDs and DVDs On-Demand, music downloads via Amazon MP3 and video downloads via Amazon Video-On-Demand. CreateSpace is a brand of On-Demand Publishing LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN).
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics & computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes & jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, and tools, auto & industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.