My company provides various technical manuals online in PDF format. Some of our customers have expressed a desire to have the ability to purchase these manuals and have them shipped. I’ve been hunting around for a good solution and haven’t found anything. Can anyone make a suggestion? Project requirements:
- We offer hundreds of manuals and can’t reasonably print them in advance. This service should be able to electronically accept a PDF and print a single of copy of the document, bind it, and ship it directly to the customer.
- For various reasons, these manuals have to be sent via USPS not FedEx/UPS. Some number of them are also shipped globally. It would be important to be able to ship via Priority, Express Overnight, and Global Express.
- It would be nice if our e-commerce backend could submit orders programmatically via a web service or other API.
- We will be handling all of the customer interaction and don’t want a solution that bills the customer on our behalf or redirects the customer off our website. We also don’t want any branding on the packing materials.
I’m looking for an answer to this myself. So far I’ve found that Lulu will only accept orders made on their site, which means you have to individually order each time.
Lightning source does dropshipping but requires a title setup fee which is around $75 for each new title you order.
Please let me know if you find a solution.
avmano@gmail.com
Most printing companies that can print from electronic submission will print, bind and ship the way you want if you pay the price they want. Make up a RFB (Request for Bid) and send it around. Compare the bids (including any deviation from what you want), and choose one. (You can include the possibility of a direct "your site to their site" link, but don’t count on that unless you want to hire a really good programmer to write your end.)
outskirtspress.com
Lulu.com
Zazzle
http://www.xlibris.com/
CafePress
CreateSpace.com and http://www.booksurge.com/ are the best because they integrate with Amazon and there are a TON of APIs