FAQ POD service

FAQ POD service

FAQ POD service


Here you can find information about the POD service with a distributor.


POD, Print On Demand, is an innovative service dedicated to publishers distributed by Messaggerie Libri or Fastbook.
The POD service allows you to print books on demand, meaning that the book will no longer be physically present in book stores, but can however be ordered by the end customer.

The printing process will be activated only after a book has been ordered by a customer, even for just one copy. In this way the publisher no longer has to manage and maintain a physical store of the copies of a title, but simply a "virtual" store.

For more information, please visit the service description page by clicking here.

Print On Demand (POD) is a printing technology used to print new copies of a book only after receipt of an order for the book. This means that books can also be printed one at a time.

The publisher decides to catalogue some of its titles as POD

It enters into the POD contract with Lampi di stampa and the Distributor, and activates the service, signing up with the website and entering its titles into the archive (pdf and technical information)

A customer orders a book catalogued as POD in one of the book stores/points of sale (traditional and on-line) managed by the Distributor.

The Distibutor collects the orders from all the sales channels and sends a file containing the title and the number of copies to produce to Lampi di stampa every day.

Lampi di stampa makes the books ordered and delivers them to the Distributor

Distributor takes care of distribution: it delivers the books to the book store or to the end customer, depending on the initial request.

The POD service is dedicated exclusively to publishers distributed by Messaggerie Libri or Fastbook. If you are not a publisher distributed by these two companies and would like more information on the service, contact us.

The POD service costs nothing for the activation and management of the on-line archive.
Lampi di stampa will invoice you for the expenses related to the printing of the books ordered by the end customers and the costs for delivering them to the Distributor warehouse (€ 0,10 - excluding VAT - per copy ordered).
From your Personal Area you can create quotations for your POD books and monitor sales.

To activate the POD service, follow these steps:

1. Register on the website and confirm your registration with the e-mail that we will send you.
Remember that you need to confirm registration in order to use the services.

2. Enter your Personal Area in the "Account data/Billing data" section, select from the drop-down menu your Distributor and validate your publisher code. Check and save the data proposed by the system. Should the data shown contain errors, please contact your Distributor.

3. Go to the "Account data/Contracts" section, enter the data of the legal representative, accept the POD contract and save it.

We will send you a confirmation email with the POD contract attached, the contract is personalized with the data entered in the system and you'll need to print it, sign it for acceptance and send it along with the required documents as set out in the contract itself.

In the Contracts section you will always be able to find a customized copy of the contract.

5. After receiving the signed contract together with the documents, we will send you an e-mail to inform you that the POD service has been activated.

6. Then you will be able to enter and edit the titles in the archive that you wish to catalogue as POD.

Yes of course. You can create quotations and order test prints of your titles entered as POD, directly from your Personal Area, in the "POD/ePOD Titles" section. The delivery address or addresses will be entered during the order phase.

The minimum number of copies that you can order for test prints is 1.

If the book entry function is deactivated, it is because the POD service has not yet been activated.
Check that you have:
1. validated your publisher code
2. entered all the data and accepted the on-line contract on the "Contracts" page of the "Account Data" section
3. sent a copy of the contract with the requested documents.
If you can check all the steps, please contact us to verify the state of progress of activation of the service.

During the guided procedure for entering a book, you will be asked:
• to validate the ISBN code for verification of the title with the MeLi systems
• for the technical characteristics: printing quality (photographic or standard), size, type of paper, grammage, type of printing used for the content, printing of the cover, type of lamination, with or without flaps (specifying the width of each one), the measurement of the bleeds and of the spine of your file.
• to upload the cover files.
• to upload the content file.

You can find out how much you will be billed by Lampi di stampa for printing the books entered in the POD archive and for expenses for delivery to the MeLi warehouse by creating a quotation directly from your Personal Area: in the "POD/ePOD Titles" section, you will find a button dedicated to the fast quotation. Remember that you can see the quotation when entering the title, before confirmation.

Lampi di stampa will upload the pdf of the invoice for the POD service into your Personal Area every month, on the basis of the books ordered and sent to Messaggerie Libri during the previous month. You will be automatically notified by e-mail of the issue of a new invoice. The invoice will be paid by Messaggerie Libri, who will pay the invoice amount to Lampi di stampa on your behalf. Together with the POD contract you will also receive the delegation of payment that you will need to subscribe in order to activate the POD service.

Yes, of course. From your Personal Area in the "Order Trackingsection you can see all the orders that MeLi sends to Lampi di stampa for the production of your titles entered into the POD archive.

Yes, you can decide to temporarily suspend the printing of a book through POD, directly from your Personal Area by clicking the "Switch to runs" button relating to the title you decide to suspend.
The system will check whether there are copies booked from MeLi and still to be delivered, then you can decide to proceed:
• If you decide to proceed before the suspended orders have been delivered by Lampi di stampa, the order will be sent to you and you must complete the order. This means that you must go ahead with the production and delivery of the titles booked.
 If you decide to await completion of all the orders before deleting the title, please try to go ahead with the operation again in the next few days.

Yes, you may decide to delete a title from the POD/ePOD archive at any time, by clicking the "Delete" button on the line relating to the title to be eliminated. The system will check whether there are copies booked from MeLi and still to be delivered, then you can decide to proceed:
• If you decide to proceed before the suspended orders have been delivered by Lampi di stampa, the order will be sent to you and you must complete the order. This means that you must go ahead with the production and delivery of the titles booked.
• If you decide to await completion of all the orders before deleting the title, please try to go ahead with the operation again in the next few days.

Lampi di stampa will send the titles to the warehouse specified by MeLi during the order phase. The cost envisaged for delivery to the MeLi warehouse is € 0,10 (excluding VAT) per copy ordered.