Can POD products be corrected?

Sure. Since it's print on demand. For example, with Lulu you can temporarily take the book off the "for sale" list, upload the correct PDF files to correct the problem. I assume it's the same thing with other POD printers -- just send them a new file. However, not sure how it's handled with companies like iUniverse.

Yes errors in POD books can be corrected but it's very costly. Say you paid $550 for a POD contract and say you missed some errors in the galleys. Now you've caught them or worse yet customers on Amazon are complaining about them. You can just leave it as is and endure or you can cancel the contract and reissue the book with a new contract at an additional $550. Now your $550 bargain has cost over $1000 and and additional 90 days since you sent out all those lovely glossy press releases. Makes one quite woozy, yes?
If however, the errors are the fault of the POD layout crew and do not occur in the galleys then the company will make the changes. That's the best you can hope for. My second POD book had all the chapters from Forty-one to Forty-nine printed as Fourty-one and so on.

This is not just a POD problem. A few years ago a well known writer with a well known house was horrified when his book was printed and shipped as the pre-galley draft. Getting the books back was a nightmare and since it had been hyped to the rafters many had already been sold. Not a good thing.

I would take account of what the policies and fees are for the POD publisher your going with.

eldragon said:

Let's say you are reading a book that's POD, and the chapters are mis-numbered. Nobody noticed it before, but now - it's noticed. Can this be changed since there weren't a specific number of books printed?

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If the book has no ISBN (eg lulu's basic package) then it can go through as many different editions as you like--and for free, at least with lulu. Two people buying the same title at different times could receive entirely different products. As far as I'm aware, lulu doesn't even change the product ID between editions.

If the book has an ISBN then you would need to assign a new one, because the ISBN relates to a specific product. In this sense, the book can't be "changed", only revised and reissued. The cost of doing this depends on the company you're dealing with. I think lulu doesn't charge much more than the ISBN fee and the printer's repeat setup costs, but I could be wrong--I haven't looked at their specifics for a long time.

eldragon said:

If there is an error made on a POD style book, can it be corrected?
Let's say you are reading a book that's POD, and the chapters are mis-numbered. Nobody noticed it before, but now - it's noticed. Can this be changed since there weren't a specific number of books printed?

Click to expand...

Infinity charges $50 for changes after the book has gone on sale. Infinity also gives a break on the price for substantially revising/up-dating a non-fiction book.

What about other books? I found a typo in The Lord of the Rings that I'd like to get fixed.

corrected book

I just went through a problem very similar to this, and a company called mimeo held my hand and walked me through the simple process of changing my (horrific) error. It was so easy, they have this cool driver that let me print directly to their server, and then knit the corrected page back into where it belonged. Its funny because i haven't seen anybody mention this company, i just came accross it by luck because they were offering me a $100 off any print job, and its all custom print-on-demand. I don't know if the code is still working but try it....i used mimeo100 at mimeo.com.