• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, March 28, 2008 12:30 PM

Signaling that it is intent on using its position as the premiere online bookseller to strengthen its presence in other phases of bookselling and manufacturing, Amazon.com is telling publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on its Web site.

Instead of printing a large quantity months before a title goes on sale, print-on-demand allows publishers to print copies in response to requests from retailers or other customers. The technique has been embraced by more than half of the country's university presses and virtually all of the major consumer publishers for some titles, says Albert N. Greco, a professor at the Fordham Graduate School of Business who studies the book industry. A number of companies offer print-on-demand services to publishers, including Amazon's BookSurge unit, which it acquired in 2005, as well as rivals such as Lightning Source, a unit of closely held Ingram Industries. A spokesman for Lightning Source says the company has printed more than 50 million books for more than 5,000 publishers worldwide since its founding in 1997.

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