Slashdot Mirror
The BookMachine: On-Demand Book Printing in 3-5 Minutes
Photo_Designer writes "Engadget has an article about these cool BookMachines that spit out on-demand books in just a few minutes. Sounds cool. Forget eBooks.. get the real thing!" The company website has some more information, though it's a bit suspiciously skimpy on hard specifications.
In USia, however, it's a different story. IMHO, there's a perverse sense of pride in not reading that is slowly crawling through the USian population. More and more people (that I work with, at least) simply want to go home and let the TV do their imagining for them.
So, you could have vending machines which not only print books, but tuck the reader in to bed after bringing them hot coco and a stuffed bear before reading it to them and they still wouldn't take off.
However, for you and I of the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing.
I think slashdot has slashdotted itself in the last few days. I keeps showing me all kinds of errors. For example, when I tried to view the comments for this article I got an error page the first time.
Excellent! No more "Out of Print" (Hopefully). I don't know if only a few of us have encountered more than one reference book that has been out of print since the mid-80s and is virtually impossible to find.
Yes, "no more eBooks" sounds good, but I'd say "Finally, a great balance".
Soon there will be eBookMachines which do all the stuff the BookMachines do but entirely online!
Nobody reads anymore, huh? So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?
I knew it all along! Now, excuse me, a Simpson's rerun is on and I need it to think for me.
Library checked out of the book you need for that paper? Just make a copy! I can't think of how many times back in high school where we got assigned a paper on a given subject and I got to the library only to find that most if not all the relevant books were long gone. Of course, it'd only work so long as it was extremely cheap. Most students I know are poor :-)
death by encylopedia Brittanica
Nobody eats anymore, huh? So all these giant McDonalds they're building are just for decoration?
It would seem a bit strange when the bookmobile prints your books for you. Imagine doing research or a book report and having to cite your sources. Do you cite that it was published a couple of days ago at the back of someone's tour bus?
The idea of print-on-demand does seem attractive, though. No real inventory to keep track of. No shelf space, no warehouse needed, and no unsold books. A similar promise brought out by e-books, except that you actually get a tangible book in the end. It can't be all bad.
This seems really neat, and especially convenient for booksellers to have larger selections of books without having to stock up on physical copies. In fact, it seems very similar to the previously mentioned software on demand" system
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
i wonder if price will be the same as the official publishers copy also if the printing company will pay royalty or will be classified as a retailer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The purchase of books does not necessarily imply the reading of them.
KFG
That vending machine that cut potatos and fried them in the machine and dispensed them on the fly. Fresh hot fries on demand. What ever happend to that?
------------------------------ SirPhreak - "It's Thinking..."
"Photo_Designer writes "Engadget has an article about these cool BookMachines that spit out on-demand books in just a few minutes. Sounds cool. Forget eBooks.. get the real thing!" The company website has some more information, though it's a bit suspiciously skimpy on hard specifications."
Soon what happened to the music and movie industry, will happen to the book publishing industry.
..do all the scrolls and cunieform tablets I see at the MVSEVM?
They should invent an envelope stuffing machine that actually worked reliably.
-- Tov Are Jacobsen
My printer jams with normal paper... it doesn't stand a chance with book covers...
Even if it could there's no way I'm getting a staple through all that!
There's actually quite a lot of Print-On-Demand (POD) publishers out there these days.
Have a look at Publish And Be Damned for example.
(Even CafePress is offering it alongside their tshirts and stuff, though as with their other products, they're quite expensive)
I think the difference with this one is the specific machine, and the speed it produces the book. That's only really important if you're standing in front of the machine at the time.
Maybe we'll get book vending machines outside the supermarkets, and all the bookstores will close down? Or then again, maybe not. If I'm buying books, I like to browse around the store, see what it's got... Find a cover that appeals to me... read a random page to see if I like the writing. A book machine in the mall won't do that for me, so I'll still go to the book store. Or I'll use mail order... in which case it doesn't really make any difference to you whether it takes five minutes or five hour to print, because the shipping time will make that irrelevant
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Do not promote this government granted business methord intellectual monopoly.
" The purchase of books does not necessarily imply the reading of them."
Oookaay. So what does it mean? There's a lot of uneven tables out there?
Now, excuse me, a Simpson's rerun is on and I need it to think for me.
Krusty: "From now on, I'll be doing the thinking for both of us."
(I said that to my wife a few days back. She was not amused.)
it's a bit suspiciously skimpy on hard specifications
It's also suspiciously similar to an Internet Archive program that's been in operation for years.
It seems like most printed materials we have these days are one-time-use. Newspapers, magazines, even most books, will only be read once, and then recycled. Some kind of reusable book display mechanism (yes, an e-book) seems like a much cheaper and more environmentally-friendly way to do this. I would happily pay more to have less waste. An on-demand book printer just makes this problem worse because we'll print more and more stuff, when we should be looking for ways to print less stuff.
I believe that Xerox had these machines in the mid-90s.
Graphic Arts Monthly has a nice blurb about the machines too (from 1996!).
Nicholas Negroponte in Being Digital talks all about these and how they will play an important part in the switch from 'Atomic Distribution' to 'Bits-is-Bits' business models.
These machine were either a really slow-burn success, or it's just an insanely slow-news day at OSDN. :-)
The American Publishing Association declares ASCII files a threat to the publishing industry...
W = (-president)^1/2
Will stores such as Barns & Nobels or Borders addopt these machines, or try to prevent them? Looks like this is a great way for them to reduce inventory and floor display size, but this might in the long run open up more competition by stores such as UPSStore or Kinkos, or even Walmart.
To make it even more interesting, would Amazon benefit by just printing the book, and automatically shipping it, w/o the need for a warehouse, profit from this kind of operation? I know that this produciton mechanism can't be as cheap as mass printing, but if Amazon can eliminate (or not needing) a few (new) warehouses, that can cancle that cost difference quickly.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
1) It could become very popular with amateur writers who won't have to secure a publishing deal to get their books distributed, they can just stand by the machine for a few hours.
2) So, when are they making one for CD-ROM's? Getting out-of-print books is a nightmare, but so it getting out-of-print computer games (read Core Contingency). I'd use one, a lot.
FGD 135
I wonder if it's coincidence that ODMC was recently awarded $15 million by a jury in litigation with Amazon.com:
t ml/
http://www.capv.com/Store/publications/pub00722.h
Barnes and Nobles are, in fact, realyl just a starbucks wrapper. they add to the atmosphere starbucks is trying to provide. at least that is the best estimation i can come up with..
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
A rebranded Xerox Docutech copier. Yawn.
Nobody reads anymore, huh? So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?
Last I checked, most people go to B+N to have a nice cuppa at the cafe corner while perusing a few magazine they picked up on the mag shelf for free.
Oh yes, and by CD, stationery and postcards, and books for work.
And it's true, sometimes book for fun also.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think this would allow for a new market segment to be opened up to consumers. I could live in any part of the world that has one of those machines, and buy that last book from my favorite German author, for example. So especially for international puplishing, this is great. I wonder if it will do magazines as well?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
so we had books, but they were hard to find, so we got online paper book sites. but they werent digital, so we got e-books. got them on demand on e-book sites. so then we got digital books on demand, but they werent paper, so we got a machine that makes the paper books at digital speed on demand.
.... oh hell, forget it.
now if we can just get... i have no idea where this is supposed to go from here.
what i really want to know is can i walk into a place with a pdf and get my own book bound and printed. that would be awesome. I have an awners manual for my car no longer in proint that id love a hard copy of.... so i can take my digital copy to be made into a
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
This is a tremendous opportunity for the publishing industry. They can save boffo $$$ on printing, shipping, warehousing, and other costs. There will be no shipping and they will only print what they sell. ( good for the environment too ) The customer will be happy in being able to get any book s/he wants at any bookstore that has one of these machines. It will be interesting to see if the publishing industry will be as short sighted as the RIAA in whether or not they will run with this new technology.
I want one to put at the end of this Blog books maker!
Is POD limited to certain books? At the moment, some out-of-print books are commanding huge price tags, what happens when you can now print a copy of the 'last copy found on earth' book?
Another way is to serialize all POD books, so someone will always get the F(irst)P(rint)!
"Print on demand" systems have been around for almost a decade. They're basically a super-industrial version of your home printer, so it (in theory) doesn't cost any more per book to print one paperback book than 100,000. They're usually used by low volume publishers (i.e. a few hundred to a few thousand). Where they really shine though is when they're used to print entirely customized manuals (i.e. if you sell some modular product you can on-demand print up a version of your manual for your customer which only includes the specific parts that their solution uses).
I think part of the reason that some of these books are out of print is that nobody has bothered, cared, or been able to negotiate with the copyright holder on doing reprints.
this machine probably wont fix that problem, maybe partially (for those books that just havent gotten published because nobody wanted to print them)
It could also be a big boost to public domain books....
though I'd hate to waste the paper and cut down trees...
Still I prefer reading a book over a PDF. books are highly portable, you can carry a book with you almost anywhere. And it doubles as a defense weapon that gains strength by thickness.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Porn on demand! Oh no wait...
crap!
My penguin ate my sig
Nobody reads anymore, huh? So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?
I think they are there to hold Starbucks.
I can see the latest and greatest publishing craze: Extreme Writing and Extreme Editing modeled after Extreme programming.
Not only will authors be able to publish the same day they write "The End" (with their editer looking over their shoulder in typical pair writing style) they can issue revisions for future copies.
No need to think too deeply about plot, if it doesn't sell well in the first few days - rewrite the thing!
Oh wait, that already happens now without the rewriting part...
-Adam
Why invest large amounts of money into a medium that is slowly shrinking. Children don't read anymore and more and more people are moving their periodicals to an electronic format. E-ink makes it so paper is no longer needed and OLED's promise an even cheaper alternative. I remember when Jeff Bezos at a company meeting (Amazon, duh) said 'Books aren't going anywhere because people like the feel of a dead tree in their heands". But this is slowly changing. Magazine and newspapers sales continue to shrink, book sales are constantly going down. Libraries are getting less and less funding every year (thanks Bush) and fewer people are reading things that aren't on the internet.
I remember a time when we all got the paper for our news. Now we just logon to Slashdot, newsforge, Salon and others to get our daily fix. Why do I need paper at all?
I give it another 10 years til paper books and periodicals becomes a niche market... at best.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
this is a pretty rad idea, could save a lot of paper on popular titles, textbooks, and other things that are bought by massive ammounts of people everywhere. i doubt it will replace the bookstore just yet, but it's a good step forward finding yet another way that machines can replace people (ie: slacker hippies will find something productive to do with their lives since they can't just major in english and work in a bookstore).
in bed.
"However, for you and I of the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing."
It's actually "for you and me." Normally, I wouldn't care, but if you're criticizing the US for being dumb and claiming to be well read yourself, you might as well use correct grammar.
No, this thing prints in full color... we're talking porn on demand! Or even children's books on demand... anyway, you don't have to be literate to use this service, and it WILL take off in the US too.
The problem with print on demand is it's 20 to 30 -Dollars- for a book, when I can go down to the book store, get something by a -known- author, who has a reputation for being -good- for less than 6 dollars.
Now if the print on demand books were half as much as the ones in the book store, I'd look at them. Until then, print on demand will just be a pipe dream.
But it won't take off anywhere else. Why wait five minutes for a book you can't flip through and pay the same price for what is practically guaranteed to be inferior to a cheap mass-market paperback? People like going to bookstores as an end in itself... even for new bestsellers it's not something that anyone will welcome being automated away.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
The clock on copyrights can time out based on when the work went out of print. Now publishers can hold on to works indefinitely.
sigs are a waste of space
...here (sorry, german-only site). BoD has been operating since many years already. It's amazing that it's not more popular.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
I have been working with authors of out of print technichal books on functional programming and type theory to get the books published via print-on-demand services. It is absolutly great for academic interest books which a traditional publisher will refuse to carry or charge an obscene amount for because of the limited demand.
See my shop
http://notanumber.net/
I'm not sure what kind of technology they are using, but there is www.xlibris.com, which, after an initial setup fee, does one-offs as they are purchased. There is also www.mypublisher.com, which publishes onesie-twosie books for personal use (they are expensive, not much room for markup) and then CafePress has been printing books, although their formatting options are limited. Xlibris will allow you to do color on the regular pages.
It only implies the desire to possess. It does not even imply the intent to read.
Oh, sure, if you or I buy a book it at least implies the intent (although still not the actual reading), but you and I are not the general case.
KFG
"Nobody reads anymore, huh? So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?" From the most recent issue of Newsweek: from '93-'03 there was a "58%increase in titles published" From '92-'02 there was a "12% decrease in fiction readers" So that giant Barnes and Noble exists because there are more books bieng printed each year than ever before. Unfortunately, fewer people are reading them.
It was once said that CAD would render paper obsolete in the drawing office, but when I was a design engineer I found that everyone had to print the thing on paper in order to proof it properly. Somehow it was easier to miss mistakes on screen and easier to spot them on paper. The paperless office is a long way off. I don't know if anyone has done research on this or not, but there is something about paper that no electronic medium will ever match IMHO.
Now before I get too far off topic or ordered to RTFA, I am aware that this thing produces a printed book. However, the process of browsing a bookstore is a lot more pleasant and user-friendly among rows of books whose titles you can see at a glance just by scanning the shelves than it would be if it were just row upon row of computer terminals hooked up to a glorified printer that spits out your book on demand.
On the other hand I am a fan of Amazon and I do occasionally use it to buy hard-to-get material. But I see this device as an addition to the publishing industry (like Amazon) rather than a replacement for it. After all, Borders and Barnes & Noble aren't exactly dropping off the face of the Earth just because Amazon lets you search the text of all books and offers an amazingly convenient service, are they? Hell, you might even see these machines popping up in bookstores.
Then there's the social aspect of bookshops. They're a great place to go in the evening if you have a few hours to kill, want to go to a book-signing, want to sit and read, sip coffee, etc. I think they'll be around for another while.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I know there are high speed scanners. They require loose sheets. Does any one know of an automated page turning scanner ?
The article didn't mention it, but I did a little bit of search and it seems that cost of one book printed in a standard 5000 piece print is about $1.85 USD, while cost of book printed in this machine is about $5.00 USD. There is also one place that mentions that thanks to 20-30% books being returned to the publisher, it adds abotu $1.65 USD to the cost of one book. Which would bring the comparison somewhere about $3.50 USD for standard book versus $5.00 USD for on demand one. Which is not such a big difference, when you consider you save a considerable amount on storage and shelf space.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Back in the day there used to be a lot more bookstores of every shape and size. Now, like everything else bookstores are box-stores and everything else has beeen Darwined out of existence.
Just cause we see big shiny new B&N's around dosn't mean there are more books being sold or reading being done. More coffee, more periodicals with lots of pictures sure, but actual books purchased and read? Doubt it.
Which is just like downloading an TeX,Latex or DVI encoded file off a central ftp site and proccessing it though to a postscript file and printing and binding the result. Most Universities and tertiary institutions were providing this service by the late 80s. Harvey Ross patented not an invention but a description of an existing service.
Are any of the books free?
John Kerry is a Joke!
Paper has its advantages, but paper costs money and takes up space. Its the same arguement as with the iPod. Would you rather carry 100 cds, or one compact iPod. There's a reason iPod's become the latest little craze with geeks and non-geeks alike.
I'd much rather see a truely decent ebook reader - I'm talking about instant on, decent screen size, yet folds to something at least as compact as a real book. Add a decent bit of storage - in the 10s to hundreds of gig (which we're starting to see now) and things start to look good. We're almost there with PDAs. What we need is larger screens and more storage.
So what's preventing this? I don't think its the technology. If you thought the MPAA and ARIA (and equivalent bodies internationally) had a vested interest in stopping easy production, imagine what's at stake for book publishers. Would that medical textbook be saleable for hundreds of dollars if it was easily reproducable? I don't think so.
Browsing in a store? How about a few touch screens with a decent interface mimicing the aforementioned killer ebook reader?
This technology is good and has its uses, but an iPod like device for reading books would be better.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If reading is dwindling at any significant pace, /. is doomed unless we all start posting cartoons.
If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.
I wish more publishers did this. I'm always running across references to classic texts that have been out of print for decades. Usually I can find a used copy on the Internet, but some are difficult to find and/or very expensive.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Save money on textbooks? HAH! What a quaint idea. This will just enable textbook companies to change editions more rapidly, forcing next semester's students to buy the new book, and making your current edition worth a little bit less than the paper it's printed on.
The textbook companies will continue to rape buyers for as long as professors require specific editions for each class (which they are contractually required to do at many universities).
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
. . . keep up with the volume of SCO's FUD-filings and press releases.
I wonder how the machine "enforces" paying the publisher and/or author for each copy printed. There's very little that prevent a current book from being scanned and printed as page images or OCR'ed and printed as text. Presuming it's affordable for a small businessman, one could set up his own book piracy shop.
Tag lost or not installed.
Neither is correct.
"Me of the dwindling reading population"
"I of the dwindling reading population"
Both are incorrect. "Of" in this usage indicates origin or descent, not membership. While this usage does make the subject sound important, it is just plain incorrect. The correct form would state specifically that you are a "part of" the group. "You and I" is also better replaced by "us".
"However, for those of us in the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing."
Trying to keep "me" or "I" in this sentence is very difficult, and it would be better to forget about it completely.
More stable because not so automated is the Internet Bookmobile. Extend an invitation for a free visit at http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php
0 4/07/ 19/fighting_to_be_free/
The system is cost-effective for low print runs. There are more than 25,000 public domain or non-commercial licensed Creative Commons books available. We help authors do custom books as well. All free, supported by the Internet Archive and Anywhere Books.
July 8, 2004, we printed "Walden" at Walden Pond, until we were threatened with arrest. See
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/20
On the other hand, I can hardly see people going in to B&N and buying enough books to keep that many large stores (plus all the other stores too) operating quite nicely just so that they can have another book sitting on the shelf looking impressive. I'd wager that most books bought are at least attempted to be read.
Automated machine my ass....it's just a big box with 3 midgets inside, a broadband connection, a laser printer and a damn big stapler. If you listen carefully, sometimes you will hear them bicker.
In fact, I would gladly do a beta test for a company that would make such a product.
Best Buy can have you arrested
If this becomes widespread I, for one, will have to give pink slips to the 2-dozen monks slaving away in my basement monastery... what are they going to do then, make novelty liquer?
An engineer that graduated from my university, oh, five or six years ago, got hired at the USPO. Guess what he first job they gave her was? Disproving perpetual motion machines
Seriously. She'd go though those patents, write out the equations, etc, why they wouldn't work, and send a nice letter back to the person telling them why their patent application was denied. And she always had plenty of work to do.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Interesting POD technology, licensing, etc. report by Gary Michael Smith of Chatgris Press.
T C% 20POD%20Presentation.pdf
http://www.chatgrispress.com/Other%20Services/S
Highlights are:
= 244 page book costs
o per book setup cost: $150.60
o per book print cost: $3.81 (includes markup)
o per book cover print cost: $1.50 (includes markup)
o per book total print cost: $5.31
= Compare to offset printing cost (3000 units):
o per book total print cost: ~$2.00
= Contract rights model:
old: Rights revert to the author when the title goes "out of print."
new: Rights revert to the author when sales figures fall below a certain threshold level for two consecutive royalty periods.
-
Personally, I do not expect to see this at the corner bookstore any time soon, since there is a totally separate contractual royalty model, unless some large chain bookstore gets into the business ater putting POD into their standard author contract; these are usually exclusive, so there'd have to be incentive on both sides to renegotiate an existing contract.
From the pictures, it's also clear that BookMaker has been licensing hardware from Marsh Technologies, Inc., so this is about 4 years old already.
-- Terry
Of course you don't, because you read books. That's what books are for, right? Like plates are made for eating off of, thimbles are made for sewing with and action figures are made for playing with.
A goodly number of people buy a goodly number of books with absolutely no intent to read them, ever. They go on display on the shelves right next to the plates that no one had better ever eat off of, the thimbles that will never be used for sewing, the model cars that will never pushed around while making "Vroom, vroom" noises and the action figures that any child who actual plays with them will likely get a punishment for doing so.
Entire companies exist, profitably, for selling nothing but plates that will never be eaten off of. People are funny.
Then there are the even larger number of books sold where at the time of purchase the intent to read them was at least present, but the attempt is never actually made, because reading does not have a high enough priority in their lives to support that intent. The fact that they rarely actually even attempt to read a book rarely disuades them from purchasing more and more books that they have "good intentions" about, but never actually read.
I do not, personally, understand this behavior, but I certainly observe a good deal of it.
KFG
Inkling Books
Second, the company behind this, On Demand Machine, is the SCO of publishing. They've never managed to create a commercially competitive product. But like SCO, they're attempting to exploit the current mess in IP law to enrich themselves at the expense of those who have created a different and more successful business model (placing far more complex POD systems in wholesale book channels). Think Linux for their competitors. On Demand Machine has a badly worded patent on a kiosk-based, book-at-a-time scheme that they've never managed to make viable. Now they've managed to dupe a jury into accepting that their patent applies to the very different business model used by LightningSource/Ingram/Amazon.
On Demand Machine is currently going after the big guys (Ingram/Amazon). But if they win there, they'll have lots of money to sue mom-and-pop print shops and those who have developed online file to book print systems, including those using free/open source software and public domain etexts.
Fortunately, there's a lot of prior art for print-on-demand from the late 1980s that could invalidate their now-dangerous patent. If anyone has legally sound evidence that illustrates books being printed one-at-a-time after being ordered from before the early 1990s, please get in touch with me via the InklingBooks.com link above. I'll help to put you in touch with the good-guy lawyers in the lawsuit. Interestingly, as with SCO's attack on Linux, in this case IBM is among the good guys.Unfortunately, the case is not being fought with IBM's lawyers.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
I'm sorry, but the Franklin Mint NASCAR Heroes Commemorative Plate series do not count as plates. They are just stupid-shit-that-rednecks-buy...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
I don't really want this. I want a good, editable, cut-and-paste-able ebook format. Especially for non-fiction books. I'm in grad school and every time I have to type out a quote it irritates me that the only reason I can't cut and paste everything is based on restrictive laws and fear of piracy. Sure, there's lots of demand on kazaa for books put out by University Presses.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
There are times when keeping your mouth shut is good for your health...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
However, if P-O-D makes it feasible to keep a work from going out of print by printing a limited number of copies per year, a publisher can maintain that control.
That is, until an author re-ups his contract with a publisher when negotiating publishing rights for the next title. The author might ask for a clearer definition of "in print", such as specifying how many copies of a work the publisher makes in a calendar year.
Sometimes I'll even put up a nifty space wallpaper and vroom it around the screen. It just so happens that I have the Earthrise thing up right now (what with it being the anniversary and all) so that makes for good wooshing fun.
I've learned not to do this in front of other people, they tend to find it extremely distracting.
Lock phasers on submit! Fire!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I'm sorry, but the Franklin Mint NASCAR Heroes Commemorative Plate series do not count as plates. They are just stupid-shit-that-rednecks-buy...
And books are often intelligent shit that stupid rednecks buy to appear intelligent.
KFG
What I found funny was that they say they're going to use a satellite dish to transmit the entire contents of the book from their central computer to the store, and let the potential purchaser flip through it for a while, before asking if they want to buy it.
Satellites aren't the greatest for transmitting data (a good rainstorm will stop the signal).
This has a lot of potential for marketing serials and comic books, which are very popular in asia. Especially if you could print a sample couple of pages of something you were interested in (limited free pages per month, tied to your credit card number) independant comic book publishers and writers who produce serials might want to take a look at this. (the following comment may seem sexist but its my opinion) I also bet women could be targeted if this thing was put in walmarts, supermarkets etc. and carried womens fiction in serial format. I like the idea, where can I buy this nachine ?
Yay me! ^^
In some cases, yes, this would work great. We all know how many textbooks sell for WAAAY more than they're worth.
But let's see what the actual cost is going to be. Assume the book has 300 pages, and the library charges 15 cents per page (which is the cheapest I've seen). That's $45 just for the printing costs, before you even look at the author's compensation. I didn't see anything in the article about the actual printing costs, but how much cheaper do you think the libraries will make it?
Now, if you knew exactly which page/chapter you needed and could print out just that...
Twenties Retirement
Replace "stuffed bear" with "stuffed Tigger" and I'll give you anything you want.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
My dad used to be in publishing.
The first book was very expensive, every one after that was about 1-2$ for a paper back.
The book business is similar to recording/software. You pay for the creation, the duplication is fairly inexpensive.
I still think this is a good idea, people will pay good money for books that are out of print.
Many people out there love to get PDF's and eBooks, especially from the free Gutenberg site. This machine could be great, if the price is right. I hope it's under $20 a print. Read below about how my last eBook cost me more than $60 dollars and a load of (recycled) paper. Last week, I purchased a PDF eBook online with a DRM that allowed me to print. I didn't want to read the 300(!) pages on screen so I printed it out on my home laser printer. Can you image how bulky the pile of papers was? I got frustrated with the mess after a while. So I burnt the file to a CD-R and brought to my nearest Kinkos. They could handle the job. The binding and cover were about $5 and the cost of 150 double-sided B&W pages was about $25. 2 hour later I had a usable eBook, probably similar to the machine this story is about. So printing things out in your home could cost 10-15 and they won't be bound nicely. Doesn't work well for bigger books. It cost me at least $15 in ink, and had already spent $30 online for the book. The author's site said it prints neatly. But it's also terribly unusable. There are many authors who are skipping the publisher and keeping the extra profit. John T. Reed sent me a nicely bounded book on Succeeding that I really enjoyed. And he created it at his house with a pro laser printer and the help of his family ;) I hope authors like him also sign up for this service and pass the savings on to us.
It turns out that one of the authors could no longer be contacted for permission to reprint
It won't help in this case, but you might suggest a contract change for the publisher's future book deals: If 1. the publisher has got enough pre-orders to justify a reprinting of a work that it has first published, 2. the work is currently out of print in a given territory, and 3. the publisher fails to contact the author after a good faith effort, then the publisher may reprint the work, paying the author an appropriate royalty check on the author's request.
many of the books did not have electronic versions - either did not exist, were lost or existed in very old formats. Sometimes it just isn't worth paying someone to re-type an entire book
It isn't necessary to re-type or even to OCR a text in order to get it to print-on-demand; just have the publisher scan an existing copy as images. Even if the publisher wants to reset the type, that would look like a job for a team proofreading project. Fund the project with pre-orders by adding a preface and calling it a "new edition".
Yes, because only "known" authors write well.
"Known" authors are "known" to write well. Finding an author who writes well takes time, and some people don't have a lot of free time to spend. Time is money. Therefore, one saves money by going straight to the "known" authors.
I wonder how the machine "enforces" paying the publisher and/or author for each copy printed.
Perhaps, as in color copiers' yellow channel, books printed on this carry some sort of watermark not detected in normal reading that encodes the machine's serial number and date and time of printing. Then a copyright owner could track down the machine and its owner, accusing the owner of vicarious copyright infringement, an offense defined as ability to police use + profiting from infringement.
This isn't about duplication, this is about creation EVERY time! I've worked in publishing using Xerox Docutechs and what was supposed to be the big thing Xeikon Digital presses. They both screamed all day long about how great POD is, but they were real quiet when it came to the costs. I'm not sure how they will price this machine but if it's anything like Xeikon's (Lease with per page charges). It will still be really expensive and in a consumer arena most people don't see the value in the POD.
What I want ... is a machine that can print--using CMY and K icing--on cakes!
Kopykake: Have your photo and eat it too.
Personally, I tend to agree: a copyright holder should have some responsibilities. Alas, I don't believe it will fly in actual practice. A more realistic solution may be that of compulsory licensing: anyone can print the book, so long as they pay a licensing fee to do so. A similar situation exists with regards to musicians performing the works of other musicians. The compulsory license may be restricted to situations where it is not reasonably practical to obtain a book from the "official" publisher (where "reasonably practical" is intended to be argued in court, but would probably involve a litmus test like it costing more than twice as much to obtain the book through official channels).
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I just bought a new CD-RW drive for less than $50 USD.
Which leaves the manual, box, Certificate of Authenticity, and shrinkwrap. Besides, many consumer CD recorders cannot reproduce the copy-prevention technology in many CD-ROM titles.
Right, but this is a boundary case for two reasons.
1) The vast majority of authors publish one title.
2) The vast majority of titles published do not generate lucrative sales.
Sure, Stephen King has the leverage to make this kind of ex post facto change to his contract, but Joe Schmoe definitely doesn't. As with the recording industry, the publisher holds most of the cards.
People like going to bookstores as an end in itself.
I was fortunate enough to have Clinton show up at a local book store. This boggles the mind. I'm still trying to figure out why anyone would give this guy their hard-earned money, much less have him sign a book he wrote. What a way to "punish" a former president who singlehandedly turned our system of justice into a three-ring circus, and redefined the word "sex" for people the world over.
For my Grandfather's 90th birthday, the grocery store bakery put an edible photo on the cake. They used a sheet of sugar, in an inkjet using soy-based inks. We sent them a .jpg, and they printed it and slapped it on right next to the regular hand-drawn "Happy Birthday".
without ebook "problems" such as DRM
These are very serious problems when you consider it in a book. A paper book could last hundreds of years if properly cared for. A DRM file may be unaccessible as soon as the device it was licensed for breaks down or becomes obsolete.
the two main causes of paper jams are either:
If it's an older printer, it may need a service to clean the paper path rollers - they pick up a slick of sorts that makes the rollers shiny and less able to grip the paper, causing slippage within the paper path.
If it's a newer printer, check that you are using the correct paper - if it's too light it will not get gripped firmly be the rollers and slip, if it's too heavy it may not clear the rollers either.
Don't take paper out of the wrapper until you are planning to use it - paper needs to be kept dry, and leaving it out of the wrapper in a humid environment can alow it to become damp, which will cause the sheets to stick to each other, causing jams.
Store the paper somewhere flat - paper with dog-eared edges or corregations will catch on the internal mechanisms of the printer and jam.
Lastly, if the printer is any of the top/gravity feed devices (e.g. a HP LJ 6L), throw the sucker out. The engines on these were a disaster and commonly exhibit feed problems due to a design problem.
While you won't be able to run hard cover stock through your average printer, there is no reason to have a printer that jams all the time.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I work for an "On demand printing company" the "on demand" part has been a printing industry buzz word for a LONG time. We (the company I work for) are in the "On Demand" printing biz... but we actually make a profit! This is a cut-throat business, I see printshops (digital only) struggling just like the offset-only printshops.
...
Don't believe the buzzword hype!
I am amazed this was posted as a "news story", but I know the horse-like blinders with some of the news posts here.
Also, shouts-out to my fellow Sweat Hogs back at the shop. And of course many thanks to the developers of GhostScript--sweet!
My Simpsons style picture of a chalkboard on the wall next to my desk says it all:
"I do not work in a sweat shop."
"I do not work in a sweat shop."
"I do not work in a sweat shop."
-signed Anonymous SysAdmin/CopyWhore in SoCal
For me, there's nothing like sitting down, popping open a heavy, hardback and getting the first wiff of the book's pages.
Yes, movies are good, but books are much more detailed than movies can ever be. Ever read Lord of the Rings, or the Sword of Shannara trilogy cover to cover? I'm not sure if I can sit through reading another 4 pages of descriptive narrative in FotR, but Sword of Shannara is definitely a great series, as are it's "sorta" sequels. More information can definitely be found at terrybrooks.net.
without them, I would never have tasted Fat Tire Ale, or gone to Trader Joe's.
Howdy Uncle Ed. He's been talking about this for years. I wasn't sure this was for real, but way to go Ed.
In the two B&N in this area, even though they serve Starbucks coffee, they're *not* actual Starbucks owned stores.
Who owns them, I have no idea.. but they told me that it's not Starbucks.
slacker hippies will be turned out into the street since they can't just major in english and work in a bookstore
My new
If they didn't have gourmet coffee and sell CDs and DVDs, do you think they'd still be as popular?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I run a customized book and card business, but currently only offer Acrobat PDF and JPEG products. Digital images are uploaded, faces are extracted, then these faces are used to make customized picture books, greeting cards, playing cards, etc. One can see the products online for free, but high-quality PDF/JPEG versions are sold.
/.-er have any ideas on how I can accomplish this process? Ideally I would either find my own page-binding solution, or send a PDF file and shipping information to a contracted fulfillment person or company.
k w2l8g4 4 xgz8jkv
I have been looking for an economical solution for picture book fulfillment, but so far the local printers and art-based bookbinders want a lot of money for single-run copies.
Would any
So far I have been unsuccessful in getting MyPublisher.com, Snapfish.com, etc. to return my e-mails and calls requesting a biz-dev discussion.
Here's the URL for the company that was formed to commercialize the technology:
http://www.imagejester.com
Here are my own shared stories/cards:
http://www.imagejester.com/gallery/list.jsp?arg=5
and a picture book example:
http://www.imagejester.com/gallery/story.jsp?arg=
Thanks in advance for any leads that this posting may generate.
Matthew Clark
ImageJester, Inc.
But yes, it would be nice to have access to things that are hard to find nearby.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I always hear that argument: let the TV do their imagining for them.
What I want to know is, if the TV is doing the imagining for you, isn't the book sorta doing the imagining for you too? Yes, there are no pictures, but it makes up the story for you.
BTW I read a ton and I don't have cable, just felt like being a smart ass.
steal this sig
"Excuse me, those books over there, how much?"
"Over where?"
"Over there, those ones"
"You mean Dickens...the collected works of Charles Dickens."
"Yes, are they real leather?"
"they're real Dickens."
"I need leather books to go with my leather sofa...everything else in my house is real...I'll give you 200 pounds"
"are they leather bound pounds?"
"no...they're just ordinary pounds"
"sorry, I need leather bound pounds to go with my wallet....next"
No way man. I like reading on the train and my Palm gives me 5-7 books in its measly 8 MB of RAM. It fits in my back pocket which a book does not, and it requires less "work" to read (I keep my thumb on the "page turn" button so I just need to move my thumb about 2 mm each page turn, as opposed to moving my whole hand about 8" for a page turn, plus a book requires two hands). To be completely fair, the Palm requires about 4 times as many page turns since the screen is smaller, but still 8 mm is less than half an inch and that's just thumb muscles, not fingers/wrist/elbows.
Of course, not moving my body around makes me fall asleep more easily, but napping while commuting isn't so bad. If I really don't want to fall asleep I'll grab a paper someone discarded and read that, but this is getting offtopic. I don't intend to forget eBooks no matter how easy it is to produce a real book.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
because God forbid we would actually have to use regular paper, and perhaps hole punch it and put it in a binder! I would say this were a real advancement if it were smaller, and sold for under $1000. As an amateur author, it would be useful and professional looking. That being said, what makes paperback any better than regular paper coming out of a regular laser printer? I buy high-quality paper, usually twice as good as the average paperback, and I don't have a problem with it.
Oh, sure, if you or I buy a book it at least implies the intent (although still not the actual reading), but you and I are not the general case.
Get over yourself, you stuck up bitch. People read. They may not all read Neal Stephenson or P.K. Dick, but they read.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm just starting to reach the age where reading glasses help a bit, but my mom has needed them for a few decades.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"However, for the dwindling read population such as you and me, it is a neat thing."
Bingo (I think. It would be funny if I messed that up).
And in reply to a post a couple posts above mine:
The ability to read and think critically and the ability to use proper grammar don't necessarily coexist.
No sig for you.
There's nothing like reading a real book, but they should use tons of recycled paper or make a nice program because paper kills many trees. I know this sounds weird but we should use technology for preserve this planet and not only for the big consumption.
checkout Bibliomania.com. The book was first published in 1928, so it's probably public domain by now.
Next best thing is that you can get large chocolate bars (about 220grams) with whatever pictures you want on them. Price is about UKP 9.95, ships in 2-3 days in the UK. US/Canada about 10-14 days and shipping's a bit extra. A friend of mine who had worked for them gave out smaller pieces of chocolate as his business card... you may not keep it around, but you won't forget it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Case in point: Stephen Hawking's "The Universe in a Nutshell", the book was heavily sold and given as a present, however few people could ever manage to get through the book, it probably ended up on many a coffee table and never read.
(I said that to my wife a few days back. She was not amused.)
Apparently you married the wrong woman.
Can you tell me bookmachine's incoming port numbers for eDonkey??
but where's the machine that will read it for me?
or something to turn the pages for me while I sip on my hot cocoa...
Do they get an ISBN number?
So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?
Around here they were used to establish a Starbuck's beachhead. So naturally, they've got a lot to answer for.
--DocL
If it wasn't for half of the people in this country, the other half would be all of them -- Col. Stoopnagle
That looks suspiciously like a Xerox Docutech with custom front panels.
No thanks - I like to actually be able to look through the a sampling of the whole book before making my purchase decision, at least in the case of most reference/tutorial type books. So, you print the book, put a UPC code on it, and then (after looking at it, and deciding if I want it), then I'll take it to the checkout and pay for it.
I'll not be paying for something until I have had a chance to inspect what Im actually buying.
And if I dont want it, I'll leave it there and someone else can still purchase it.
Well, then, I say it's funny.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Most McDonald'ses have modernized and have robotic fry makers. All the pimply-faced teenager has to do is dump in the contents of a frozen bag of fries and push a button. The tray lowers, and when ready it raises, shakes the excess oil off, and dumps it into the bin of cooked fries.
Fair enough. Care to tell me where I went wrong?
No sig for you.
But would at the very least imply a market for them. Thus the idea that people buy books but don't read them doesn't explain why book vending machines are not catching on in the US.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Not all of them buy books only to use them as decorations. Some people buy 2 books, one for reading and the other one for keepsake. They are book collectors or bibliophiles. The books' values go down with wear and tear. Just like comic book collecting... the most expensive ones are the ones that have never been read.
I wonder cause some books need the ilustrations to really flourish like... porn. Yeah yea troll away, all you need is a lame nickname and ONE single stupid post and you get bad karma, like.. whatever!
by CD
"buy".
Trying to keep "me" or "I" in this sentence is very difficult, and it would be better to forget about it completely.
"However, for you and me, who are part of the dwindling reading population, it is a neat thing."
i think that the readers around the world should be overjoyed. first just think of the availability of english-language books abroad (take ukraine for example, there are no barnes and noble there). second, think of a reader of books in, say, turkish, getting her supply while living in brazil. this machine could probably make more impact outside the us than within this country
I thought Brooks was always a bit simplistic, but fun.
If you liked those then you'll probably like Terry Goodkind's 'Sword of Truth' series - more details at TerryGoodkind.com.
Simplistic... I never thought about it that way. 'Entertaining' is the word that comes to mind. A bit like the Harry Potter series. Simplistic, yes, but not nearly as so.
well, if it really is the case that a subtantial ( so substantial that it warrants talking about them) number of book buyers do this for showing off, that is still a good case against the poster that claimed that the latest fashion appears to be being proud of not reading. I mean, if that were a serious problem, people would go book burning not shopping.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
As I understand it, the book industry works in mysteriously screwed up ways. If a bookstore doesn't sell a book, they send the copies back to the publisher. With paperbacks only the front cover is returned. The publisher assumes all of the risk that a book won't sell.
The wanton destruction of books as when a grocery store manager decides he doesn't like a particular book's cover and destroys it without even giving it a chance to sell, costs the publisher money. Even shipping the hardcover books back probably is billed to the publisher.
This means the publisher will be reluctant to give new authors a chance. It also means that unless you happen to be Steven King or someone equally famous, you will be paid diddly squat for a novel, pennies per copy actually sold to customers. It is common to only sell a few thousand copies so the authors months or years of work only profit him maybe $5,000 if he is lucky.
In a sane world, the people who maintain the central database of books for this machine will be less risk adverse than current publishers since it will cost virtually nothing to store a book on a hard drive. Since they won't be assuming the risk in printing thousands of books that never sell, they can and should pass on more royalty money to the author.
In this world, people will pay twice as much for a book made on one of those cool e-bookmachine-a-ma-bobs. The machine owners won't want to confuse people with too many titles so it will still be hard to get published. Once published, the machine owners will decide they are the ones really doing all the work and continue to pay the author $0.05 per book sold. Alternatively, the machine owners won't open their own publishing house, they will buy through current publishers who are too set in their ways to change author relations over a mere paradigm shift in publishing.
http://www.marxist.com/
I live in a 1 bedroom apartment and just have no room for piles of books. I read a lot and mostly on my Pocket PC (I currently have about 30 books on a CF card at the moment). The books are all stored on my HD for re-reading. No dead trees.
This parrot has ceased to be!
However, for the dwindling read population such as you and me, it is a neat thing.
However, for the dwindling reading population such as you and I, it is a neat thing.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
you're reading. the claims that folks aren't reading any more are highly exaggerated. people may be reading different things than they did when there was nothing but novels, magazines, and newspapers. granted, Tivo and DVD makes it easier to watch TV (since there's usually something decent available to watch). But the big change IMO is the availability of online reading resources. I don't watch that much streaming video and I spend a lot of time online, and that time is primarily spent reading.
Novels are for sunday afternoons at the beach where the sand would otherwise get into my wifi-enabled gear. Newspapers? ((insert gratuitous slap at the NYT here))
I think you and me need to step outside, smartass!
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Hasn't this company heard of the Internet? Wouldn't it be easier, yea cheaper, to just use the internet to transfer the book content? Who knows, maybe this Internet thing is going to be "out of print" soon.
This space available for rent.
I can see it, there will be a book vending machine next to each cola automat, my only problem will be that my selection algorithm still includes "flipping through the book and deciding if I can find the information I need within a few tries", maybe that machines will be more for the leisure reader...
Both wrong again. That statement is equating "you and I" with the dwindling reading population. Unless there are only two known people left, it should indicate that the two are a part of the population.
"However, for those in the dwindling reading population, such as you and I, it is a neat thing."
I really like this idea.
Frequently I'll need access to scientific works from decades ago that are out of print and the library doesn't have a copy.
Other readers are correct; current dpi and lighting makes PDF's less desirable. That may change in another 10-15 years.
But what I'd really like is to be able to have books printed out at larger magnification on oversize pages, with room for handwritten notes in the margins.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
So all these giant Barnes and Nobles they're building are just for decoration?
No, they're just a place for people to go drink coffee and look intelligent while they try and pick up chicks and discuss their favorite reality shows. It's the meat market of the new millenium. Depending on your goal, either look for or avoid the ones holding their books upside-down.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
They should go to Half Price Books where you can literally buy books 'by the yard'. You can fill up your shelves with all sorts of fancy books for pennies on the dollar.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
What is it about books that make them a more noble and respected source of information? Are you a better person for having read the book then seeing the movie? Do you think reading romance novels makes you more educated then somebody who just watches the History channel all they.
Me thinks the information is independent of the delivery method and it's all about what you choose to consume. There is just as much crap on the shelves of Barnes & Nobles as there is on your TV.
I think this should be part of copyright reform, if you let a piece fall out of print then you lose copyright to it.
How about instead, we require everything to be registered for copyright at the nominal cost of $1 annually. Every year each copyright holder will have to decide if his precious intellectual property is worth a buck. If he can't or won't register, it becomes public domain.
If you can't earn a dollar from your copyright each year, it certainly can't be so valuable as to require 95 years to expire.
We could use the new influx of cash to fund the US PTO to hire people who actually knew what they were doing. Everybody's a winner!
I'm surprised that a company that allows their website to be built with FrontPage could print a paperback in 5 minutes ;-)
"Sometimes you've got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight" Bruce C0ckburn
Almost right:
;)
"However, for those in the dwindling reading population, such as you and me, it is a neat thing."
It should be "me" instead of "I" as without reference to the other person, noted as "you", the sentence requires "me" to read correctly.
(On the other hand, I myself didn't pick up on the bit about dwindling populations and noting it should have been "for those in..." so we've all learnt a lot today