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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.
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 :-)
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.
The purchase of books does not necessarily imply the reading of them.
KFG
..do all the scrolls and cunieform tablets I see at the MVSEVM?
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.
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
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
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
They were replaced by teenage emplyees in Mcdonlads
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.
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) {
People actually buy used books by the foot for decorative purposes. Many books are purchased just to possess and display them, sort of like trophies. Just about every upper middle class home has a copy of Moby Dick in it somewhere. I'd guess about 1 in 100 has actually been read.
I habituate estate sales and such looking for "used" books, many of which have obviously never been read, especially those in shrink wrap. I once got free first pick of an extensive private library with dozens of unread books in it, and it had belonged to a history professor. The commemorative editon of the Feynman Lectures, still in the shrink wrap, was a nice bit of booty, it went very nicely with the unopened recordings of the same.
KFG
"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.
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
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
Many books are purchased just to possess and display them...
I actually have a number of books which have never technically been opened but which I have read not just once but often several times. They are classics which I frequently lend or give away. I then purchase replacement copies to have on my shelf should I wish to either A - re-read them, or B - pass them on again.
Things are not always what they seem...
"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.
Things are not always what they seem...
Including the purchase of books. That's my very point.
And I too gave away my previous copy of the Feynman Lectures. A nice bit of booty to the recipient.
KFG
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.
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
THe standard procedure for scanning a book is to cut the spine off and feed the resulting loose pages into a scanner with a sheet-feeder. If it's not fast enough for you, put 1/2 or 1/4 of the pages into two or four such scanners.
21st Century Technology allows piracy in net.time.
Tag lost or not installed.
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
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
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! ^^
You like using the word 'booty' a lot. Are you a pirate or a rapper? I can't quite decide.
That looks suspiciously like a Xerox Docutech with custom front panels.
>display them, sort of like trophies. Just about
>every upper middle class home has a copy of
Moby Dick in it somewhere. I'd guess about 1 in
100 has actually been read.
And ask your average Barnes and Nobles customer rather he'd prefer a poor translation bound in leather or a regular style, good translation for the same price and he'll go for the leather.
Speaking of display books and Mobey Dick, I received the following letter in the mail a while ago and saved it for its amusement value. Here it is, reprinted in part (ellipses where text has been eliminated -- it's too long to include the whole thing):
Building a fine library says a lot about you.
It's among the finest accomplishments a person can claim. Now take pride in adding this exquisite, leather-bound volume to
- your
library.Herman Melville's immortal classic
Moby Dick
Just one of THE 100 GREATEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN -- yours in an extraordinary, heirloom-quality Collector Edition, bound in genuine leather and accented with 22kt gold, for only $5.95*...
...I don't have to tell you that the measure of a man or woman is not calculated in dollars and cents.
It's calibrated on a more finely tuned scale. Character. Education. Values. Taste. Excellence. Achievement. Experience. These are the traits which set you apart.
Which is why I am writing you today. I believe you are unusually equipped to appreciate the extraordinary offer I am about to make. This offer is available only to the very few. Because only the very few will appreciate it...
To prove my point, take this test: When Moby Dick arrives, don't open it right away to its immortal first sentence. Just hold it in your hands a moment. Savor it.
You have never experienced a volume so impressive!
You will immediately notice it's weight, a sign of quality materials assembled without compromise, much like the vaunted weight of a Rolls Royce automobile....
...
- Now observe
- Moby Dick's exquisite leather covers
.......
- Let the light play on the beautiful stamped cover
.......
- Admire the spine, stamped with 22kt gold, and featuring traditional raised hubs
......
- Observe the gilded page edges
.......The rewards of owning this Collector Edition go far beyond the printed page. Imagine your friends' admiration as you place this volume in their hands. Imagine your pleasure as they feel the premium leather and watch the light play off the 22kt gold on the spines....
...Your Collector Edition of Moby Dick can be -- if you choose -- just the beginning of a spectacular library of the highest strivings of the human spirit, THE 100 GREATEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN.
Imagine sharing your home or office with the timeless works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Dumas, Plato, Poe and Whitman. Imagine Stevenson, London, Brontë, Chaucer, Drarwin, Browning, and Dostoevsky on your bookshelves...
...Owning Moby Dick -- and any of the other great books in THE 100 GREATEST BOOKS EVER WRITTEN may be one of the most fulfilling things to happen to you since you first tasted success. Imagine the pride you will take in your library. Imagine the pleasure of those who visit you and gaze with appreciation at your fine editions....
Well, at least they've got one thing right: when the customer's copy of Moby arrives in the mail, the first thing he'll do doubtless won't be to open it to that immortal first sentence. In fact, he'll probably just never "get around" to that.
--A witty sig proves nothing.--
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))