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Books on Demand
DreamerFi writes: "It's going to cost about $30k. Working from a digital file, it can print, bind, and trim a book of any size in a matter of minutes. Having finished with one title, it can proceed to another and another, as long as the machine is kept supplied with ink, toner, and paper-the same regular copy paper you might buy at Staples. It's called the PerfectBook Machine. How soon before your local book store has one?"
It says they use a hot-glue binding. That's not encouraging; they can be really cheap and nasty. What good is an expensive paperback book (and it will be at least 4 cents a page, more for color) that falls apart halfway through?
Now, if they had a quality paperback binding like you find on, say, Penguin paperbacks, that would be different.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I did some printing in high school, so when a friend was looking at getting a book printed, I called about and got the details.
In about 1995 or so, when I was doing this, not many places could print straight to plates for offset printing. I tracked down one place in the DC Metro area that could, and could do perfect binding [as most places wanted to do crappy plastic combs or wire bound] I think in the end, for a press run of 500 copies, 200 pages, it was about $3k. [20lb offset]. [It might have been 1000 copies, can't remember].
Anyway, we _specifically_ went this route, as it was printed, not copied. From the sounds of this machine, for the speeds it's doing, there's a good chance that it's doing copying. Copying uses toner, which flakes with use, and makes the books slowly become useless.
Ink, however, from offset printing, penetrates the paper, and is good for many, many readings. [Anyone who's had that grad class with the teacher who's too cheap to get their book printed knows these problems....as the letters slowly start disappearing from the pages].
This may be a great invention, and I'm sure that this has its uses, especially for vanity press, but I'm reluctant to say that this is the greatest invention 'till I've seen some samples so I can guage the quality of the printing. [Hell, this might not even support multiple color prints]
Oh...and for manuals, I prefer wire binding, as as I can open up the books flat, or fold them back on themselves.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Well, I don't think there is much value in making a machine that can print out the same titles that you can get from your local B&N (or online, for that matter), because those books (they mention Stephen King's Dreamcatcher) are at least somewhat popular and available (save remote/country areas, where this machine could be used for that purpose).
Where I think the most important use comes in is in the opportunities this opens up for Indy writers and zine publishers. This way, seemingly anyone can get a "professional" looking hardcopy of their own material, whereas previously they would be confined to the copying machine at Staples.
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#nohup cat
"Working from a digital file, it can print, bind, and trim a book of any size in a matter of minutes."
Wow. The scalability of this things is awesome! To be able to make books at the nanolevel all the way up to ones with enough pages to bridge the earth and moon! The implications of this new technology reaches far beyond any printing system, that's for sure.
To be able to cut paper of *any* size, whether having a length of the sun's or an atom's diameter. Amazing.
And talk about strong bindings!
I figured this would be pretty much common knowledge among /. readers, but I guess not.
Iuniverse.com has been using something similar for quite a while to allow people to self-publish. For $99 or so, your book gets put in a format these machines understand, assigned an ISBN number and entered in the Ingram book database. Amazon and BN then can sell your book. The books only get printed when someone orders one and then shipped out. The more successful ones sometimes end up on BN shelves in the brick-n-morter stores.
A great many of the books have been utter drek, but for those looking to get a few copies of their novel out, it's worth it. They are also targeting companies for internal manuals and custom books, professors who write their own texts, authors whose books are out of print, etc. If Amazon or your local Borders got one of these machines, it's still likely that a service like this would exist to get your book into the system.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
The most esoteric taste could, in theory, be satisfied anywhere and anytime: Running to catch the 6 a.m. flight to Denver, you could stop at an airport kiosk and buy a title as obscure as Thomas Merton's The New Man just as easily as you now pick up a copy of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher.
- <person> is running to catch a flight;
- for some reason, <person> wishes to purchase <product in question> first; and
- Cannot rely on the old way of getting <product in question>, as it does not provide <specific parameter> that only <hot new technology> can provide.
*sigh*Folks, I fully endorse giving bogus information to online surveys, but honestly. We've got to stop telling them that we address most of our shopping, reading and entertainment needs while running to catch our daily transcontinental flight. This is getting nutty.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions