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The BookMachine: On-Demand Book Printing in 3-5 Minutes

Posted by michael on from the pulp-fiction dept.

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.

3 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. POD by Spudley · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!)
  2. Why promote an intellectual monopoly? by NZheretic · · Score: 4, Informative
    The On Demand Machine Corporation is also the same company that has successfully sued Ingram Industries, Inc., Lightning Source, Inc. and Amazon.com for a patent granted to a methord in widespread use thoughout the academic world since the late 1970s.

    Do not promote this government granted business methord intellectual monopoly.

  3. Not all that new by iamdrscience · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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).