Publit

Publit is a Stockholm-based publishing platform that handles "Printing, production, distribution and invoicing for physical and digital books." It serves publishing houses, businesses and organizations, and says that "more than 2,500 publishers, government agencies, and organizations are using Publit." Its site offers market and language versions for Sweden and Norway, in Swedish, Norwegian and English. The company behind it is Publit Sweden AB, with a Stockholm postal address. Print on demand is the core of the offer, surrounded by warehousing, digital distribution, e-book and audiobook conversion and a webshop that publishers can embed on their own site.

Print on demand

Publit sums up its print on demand as "Sell first, print later," with no excess inventory. In fuller form, "Print on Demand means your books are printed only when there's an actual order. No excess inventory is created, and you take no financial risk since the book isn't produced until it's paid for." The company pitches it as a way of "keeping your backlist alive," and it handles "the entire supply chain from production to distribution and invoicing."

The print-on-demand package has no fixed monthly fee: "Create account 0 SEK/month," with an unlimited number of editions. Publit takes a 10% commission on distribution to online bookstores, 10% on distribution to physical bookstores, and 20% on sales through your own online stores. All prices on the page are stated excluding VAT.

Print on demand can also be combined with stock. The home page says that mixing print on demand with inventory lets a publisher optimize the number of copies printed and avoid gaps in production, and that "When a book is no longer in high demand, it switches to Print on Demand, freeing up capital that would otherwise be tied up in unsold inventory." There is a cost estimator for working out the numbers.

Warehousing

The warehouse package costs 1,395 SEK a month and covers "Inventory management, distribution, and invoicing. All in one place!" Publit says the inventory is managed "at one of Sweden's largest logistics centers for book distribution." Publishers can print "with us or at an external printing house," and the home page adds that printing at Publit's affiliated printing house comes with possible volume discounts. Publit handles invoicing, administration, shipping and support, the integrated warehouse lets you track stock and monitor sales in real time, and customers can "skip commission fees and pay a fixed price instead." A title can move from warehouse stock to print on demand when demand drops.

E-books, audiobooks and streaming

Publit converts print files to the standard EPUB format "cost-effectively," and publishers with finished EPUB files can upload them directly. The e-book package is also "0 SEK/month," with free publishing, a 10% commission on distribution to online bookstores and 20% on your own online stores. The service list describes the result as accessible e-books created directly from your print files, and one publisher quoted on the page mentions the accessibility act as a reason to use it. For audio, Publit "offers the opportunity to convert print files into audiobooks," with professional narrators.

On distribution, the home page says: "Since April 2020, Publit has acted as an aggregator for Sweden's largest book streaming platforms." As a result, "smaller publishers no longer need direct agreements with Storytel, Nextory, BookBeat, Apple, Adlibris, Bokus, or Bokon." The "Streaming and libraries" package distributes e-books and audiobooks to Storytel, BookBeat and Nextory and to libraries via OverDrive, lists "No commission," and is priced by the number of editions: from "495 SEK/month" for up to 10 editions, through "1945 SEK/month" for up to 100 and "3245 SEK/month" for up to 300, to "3645 SEK/month" for up to 400. Above that, Publit quotes on request. Publishers set their own prices and choose their channels in the same interface, and the team offers help with formatting books for e-book and audiobook release.

Webshops

Publit's argument for the webshop is that publishers who can only sell through large retailers lose margin, while "With Publit, you can control sales and pricing by launching your own webshop." The shop is "a short code snippet that you paste into an HTML document on your website. No programming skills are required." When someone visits the site, the code calls Publit and the shop loads, giving the publisher "a fully functional online bookstore embedded on your website without having to handle distribution, maintenance, customer support, or billing." Customers can pay "by credit card, Swish, or invoice, both within and outside of Sweden." An example shop is linked from the page.

Organizations and sustainability

A separate section addresses businesses and organizations that publish material with frequently changing content. "Disposing of outdated publications is neither economically nor environmentally sustainable," the page says; with Publit, material is printed when needed and the content can be changed "with just a few clicks," which also avoids storage costs. A development manager at the organization Prevent is quoted saying print on demand is "more cost-effective and environmentally friendly" for them, because the organization prints only the books someone actually buys, so nothing goes to waste.

On its own practices, Publit writes: "We work hard to reduce our environmental impact and offset our carbon footprint in collaboration with Vi-skogen." It has a sustainability page, and its stated aim is a world "where everyone has the opportunity to write, publish, and read."

Customer voices and support

The production manager of Norstedts Publishing Group is quoted: "Thanks to Publit's Print on Demand service, we can continue investing in our backlist in a sustainable printed format. We also convert e-books with Publit." The site has a help section, a Swedish-language blog on publishing topics such as audiobooks and print on demand, customer stories, and a booking form for a meeting with the team. Contact runs through info@publit.se.

Who it suits

Publit fits publishers who want one interface for print on demand, stock, e-books, audiobooks and streaming distribution, particularly those selling into the Swedish market and its streaming services. Its print-on-demand and e-book packages at 0 SEK a month suit small publishers who want to pay only when they sell, the warehouse package suits houses with steady sellers, and the streaming tiers scale with the size of the catalog. Organizations publishing guides or reports that change often get printing when needed without stock to scrap. The audiobook service is listed without a price, so publishers planning audio should ask for a quote.