Vending Machine For Books Coming Next Year

An anonymous reader writes "CNN writes about a $50,000 machine that can print books on demand. It can print up to 550 pages and put a binding on the book in seven minutes. It will be debuting in a select number of U.S. libraries in 2007. The machine is the 'output' end of a service called On Demand Books, which is also just debuting. From the article: 'Some 2.5 million books are now available - about one million in English and no longer under copyright protection. On Demand accesses the volumes through Google and the Open Content Alliance, among other sources. [Co-founder Dane] Neller predicts that within about five years On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed.'"

Comments

hear that sound?

[macadamia_harold]

CNN writes about a $50,000 machine that can print books on demand. It can print up to 550 pages and put a binding on the book in seven minutes.

I' not sure if you hear that sound. It's faint, but i'm pretty sure it's lulu.com shriveling up and dying. Much like when you pour salt on a snail.

Re:hear that sound?

[aerthling]

Well, unless that vending machine can also print magical diamond-toothed attachments for its books that are capable of burrowing through the earth to me in rural Australia, I wouldn't worry about lulu.com shriveling up and dying just yet.

Re:hear that sound?

[utopianfiat]

And motivation for the expansion of the vending machine program to such a pissant country. Like say, literacy.

Fixed and bracing for impact. Do with me as you like, mods. *spreads cheeks*

Re:hear that sound?

[DJCacophony]

Well I'll be darned. Now if only they could invent something to get those damned kids off my lawn...

Re:hear that sound?

[kfg]

Now if only they could invent something to get those damned kids off my lawn...

Sometimes the old ways are still the best:

http://www.mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=5

http://www.mortonsalt.com/consumer/products/foodsa lts/icecreamsalt.htm

KFG

Re:hear that sound?

[bigred85]

Somehow I think some people are going to take one look at the first link you posted there and completely lose it...never taking into account the second link.

Then again I'm sure there are many that wouldn't have the faintest about the connection you're trying to make in the first place...simply because they've never heard of being able to fire salt from a shotgun.

Re:hear that sound?

[kfg]

. . .they've never heard of being able to fire salt from a shotgun.

Aaaaaaaaaaaah, the "advantages" of growing up surrounded by Adirednecks.

KFG

Re:hear that sound?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft. Supernatural, my geezerly friend. Granted, the targets are usually evil soul sucking demons and whatnot, but salt load *is* used. And at one point fired at a friendly target (who's under the influence).

Re:hear that sound?

[bigred85]

Forgive me for asking what seems to me a stupid question....but...."adirednecks"?

That little lexical question aside, yeah, I attribute that, the hairspray-fueled potato cannon, and a few other things to growing up just south of the Mason-Dixon.

Re:hear that sound?

[kfg]

"adirednecks"?

As far north above the Mason-Dixon as you can get without becoming Canadian you will find the Adirondack Mountains. An Adiredneck is a certain tribe of its inhabitants, easily identifiable by their peculiar native dress (plaid flannel shirts) and mode of transport (pickup truck with gunrack).

I don't actually live in the Adirondack region myself, but I can see it from my back window. I live in the geological formation that makes up its southern boundry. In my youth it required taking only one step across that boundry to encounter my first Adiredneck with a salt loaded shotgun.

Damn kids wouldn't stay out of his corn.

KFG

Not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't bother. It only prints books already published. Now if it printed books from the future I could consider going to a library.

Cool!

[ZzzzSleep]

Call me as soon as they produce on of these that can print out Neil Stephenson tomes.

Re:Cool!

[TaoPhoenix]

It can. That's the point.

All that has to happen is the print conglomerates need to get their act and license it.
As for the 550 page deal, just make Vol 1 and Vol 2. Cryptonomicon would just slide under the bar.

This is phenomenal, because then it yanks power away from the Big Chain stores who play games with shelf space.

Re:Cool!

[orkysoft]

There is this old technology available that can provide you with these books. It involves you entering a population center and looking around for a building that houses a so-called store (also known as shop) that sells books.

Once you enter this building, you will see many books. Once you find the books you would like to read, you can go to a "cash register" device, and hand small green pieces of paper to an employee of the store, and you get to take the books with you.

This has several advantages over the print-on-demand system described in TFA: (1) no seven minute waiting time (2) not limited to out-of-copyright books (3) a wide variety of bindings and sizes are available (usually only one variety per title) (4) you can examine and browse the books before you buy them &c.

There are also several disadvantages, each of which might or might not apply to you: (1) American cities seem to have only up to one such "book-store" per one million inhabitants. This is believed to be caused by people being badly educated and unable to read properly. (Which raises further questions about the ubiquity of safety labels on all kinds of goods, as the demographic most likely to hurt itself with simple and generally thought-to-be-safe implements is also the demographic least likely to be literate enough to comprehend said safety notices, and the most literate demographic being likely to be incensed by the inanity of these notices.) (2) the book-store might not have the book you are seeking (3) great distance between your residence and the location of the book-store might render this expedition prohibitive in terms of time investment and traveling expenses.

Seriously, when new technology is introduced, think about what it can do for you, and compare it with existing comparable technologies, and decide in which cases the advantages of the new technology are greatest, and in which cases they are negligible. You can buy well-known books such as those by Neal Stephenson from many bookstores or Amazon or other online retailers. This print-to-order machine is a good solution for very small print-runs or books with small audiences, but not for books that will sell many thousands of copies. It's simply more efficient to mass-produce them in a printing shop. Deciding how many copies to ship to each store is a different problem, but the stores can indicate their expected customer demand by ordering a specific number of copies of each title.

Re: Cool!

[sakshale]

I cannot tell you how many times I have NOT purchased a couple
of books at a book store, simply because they were part of a series
and an early volume of the set was not available.

I had a trilogy on my book shelf that was missing volume one for
years, until they issued a reprint and I was able to repurchase the set.

In both cases, I would have gladly walked up to a machine and
wait seven minutes while it produced a copy of the missing volume.

So, assuming that the quality of the machine's output is equivalent
to a standard, trade paperback, I am definately a buyer...

Re:Cool!

[crazyeddie740]

I don't see this technology as an alternative to bookstores and libraries so much as an alternative to interlibrary loans, order books through a bookstore or through Amazon. Notice that they are planning on setting these up in bookstores and libraries, so obviously bookstores and libraries don't see this as a threat to their business. If the book you want is already there at the bookstore or library, no wait. But if it isn't there, instead of waiting days or weeks for your book to arrive, you only have to wait 7 minutes. If you're lucky enough to be doing this at one of those big chain bookstores, that's just enough time to enjoy a nice cup of coffee.

As far as only being able to get books that are out of copyright, that'll only last until the publishers catch on (assuming that this technology also catches on). Publishers will no longer have to worry about making huge number of books, hoping that enough sell to at least recoup their loses - a big win for them.

I could see how this might work in libraries as well. Imagine a library starting out as just a large building full of empty shelves and one (or more) of these machines. The first patron prints out a book and brings it back to the library. It goes on the shelf. Every patron sees if the book the want is already on the shelves. If not, they print it out. When the library runs out of shelf space, it takes the least checked-out books off to the recyclers, and they get turned back into feedstock for the book machine.

The library knows that every single book in their building has at least one person who wanted to read it. They also know that nobody left the building disappointed at not finding their book. They could even combine their "business" with that of a library, and sell books to people who don't want to return them, just like Blockbusters is doing with movies.

Bah!

[ResidntGeek]

Have people completely given up on the idea that our society won't last forever? Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir are clearly a slashdotter seeing as how you've even given up on reading the fscking summary

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

You could just plug it in to your human powered OLPC ?

Re:Bah!

[kimvette]

Oh, there's nothing to worry about. Our overlords will simply reload the matrix.

Duh. Now, get back to metabolizing, coppertop.

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

What if people burn the books to keep warm if the oil runs out?

Re:Bah!

[Paranoia Agent]

Carbon Monoxide poisoning during severe winter weather actually happens from people burning things(like books, coal etc.) to keep warm. It happens.

Re:Bah!

[Osty]

Carbon Monoxide poisoning during severe winter weather actually happens from people burning things(like books, coal etc.) to keep warm. It happens.

Sadly, many people just don't realize this. For example, Seattle was hit with a huge windstorm last week that knocked out power to nearly a million people. It was so bad that there are still people over a week later that don't have power restored yet. Over the past week, 6 or 7 different people died from CO poisoning and over a hundred were treated and survived. All of them were doing blatantly stupid things like running a generator in their garage or basement (afraid of it being stolen if it was outside, I guess) or using a charcoal grill inside to keep warm.

Re:Bah!

[livewire98801]

I live in the Seattle area, and one of the local newspapers (the P-I, I think) had a front page in about eight languages that had warnings about burning things indoors to keep warm. One of my co-workers lives by Microsoft and is still without power. Wish our infastructure was more underground here. . .

Re:Bah!

[rubycodez]

100 sick and 6 or 7 people dead? That's hardly any casualties at all. Look at what storms or earthquakes do to major cities in third world countries. We've got it made here, even the dumb-asses by and large don't get themselves killed.

Re:Bah!

[kfg]

Dammit, I'm going to want books when the oil runs out! What will I do if they're all on hard drives?

Rip open your R/C car. Take out its Mabuchi 540 motor. Make it spin. Ta Da!

The motor doesn't care how you make it spin. Just get it spinning and electricity comes out of it.

One of my favorite ways to do this is to wrap a string around the shaft with a weight on the ends. Lift one of the weights, let go. Ta Da! Power to the people.

At least until the weight hits the floor. Rinse and repeat. There are various methods for lifting weights and controling the rate of fall without invoking oil/coal. You can always hire someone to lift the weight for you (In South Australia I was born. heave away! Haul away! Work songs often have an odd meter to the modern ear. They're written in five. On the fifth beat you take a rest).

KFG

Re:Bah!

[node 3]

Look at what storms or earthquakes do to major cities in third world countries. We've got it made here

New Orleans

Re:Bah!

[Osty]

Wish our infastructure was more underground here. . .

Wouldn't have mattered much if evergreen roots ripped up the lines. If anything, it would take even longer to restore power that way. It would be better if people would properly maintain their trees. That includes the government, as my power went out thanks to all of the downed trees in the state park near my house.

I'm looking at investing in a generator installation (looking at a stationary natural gas solution right now) since I now know that PSE doesn't really value me as a customer (it took them three days to even send out a crew, and five days to fully restore power).

Re:Bah!

[Osty]

100 sick and 6 or 7 people dead? That's hardly any casualties at all. Look at what storms or earthquakes do to major cities in third world countries. We've got it made here, even the dumb-asses by and large don't get themselves killed.

When you consider that the nationwide average of CO posioning cases is only around 1500 cases per year, 100 cases of poisoning and 6 or 7 deaths in the span of a week is alarming.

Note that I am in no way trying to equate our "little" windstorm to a Katrina-style hurricane or earthquake. Power out for a week and only a few people dead (I think 4 people died directly from the storm) is nothing. However the CO deaths could've been totally avoided.

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that a third world country?

Re:Bah!

[johntash]

That sucks.

Re:Bah!

[rubycodez]

by and large most of the lazy, non self-sufficient dumb-asses in New Orleans didn't manage to die either

pulp

[binarybum]

and the machine is powered by the flow of tears from green party members.

Re:pulp

[Kidbro]

and the machine is powered by the flow of tears from green party members.

Not necessarily.
As I don't live in the USA, I'm not a member of the party you're referring to, but I tend to vote green in our local elections - and I think this may be a good idea, even from an environmental perspective.
The reason is simple; I can be relatively sure that a book printed by this machine will be used. If someone is explicitly asking it to print a specific book, pay the cash for it (as I assume it will come with a fee), and wait seven minutes there's a high probability that there is actually a demand for the book. Compare this with dead tree books available today, that are printed in large series, where a certain percentage of the total amount printed is destined to never be opened at all - much less read.

Nothing makes my environmentalist heart weep as much as resources that are spent but never used.

Re:pulp

[kjart]

and the machine is powered by the flow of tears from green party members.

Why? This would potentially be better for the environment. Rather than a publisher printing X copies of a book, Y of which wont sell (Y may not be much smaller than X, depending on the book) a book is only printed when someone actually wants to buy it. No overstock, no waste.

Re:pulp

[rucs_hack]

unless there are very short books in the machine, and a public toilet nearby...

Well, at least it would be use of a sort, nice soft pages mmmm.

Re:pulp

[CatoNine]

Don't worry, your precious trees will be saved when the high-contrast e-paper reader panels become omnipresent (soon). The only environtmental pollution will be trashed PoD vending machines...

Re:pulp

[maxume]

Even better, most (new)fiber comes right off of managed forest, people that own them at this point manage them for productivity, which means leaving a substantial amount of forest behind when you log, so new trees grow better(glossing over a bunch of stuff here). That, and unsold printings are simply pulped, which is another word for recycled.

The energy consumed is potentially an issue, but the pulp itself isn't particularly relevant.

Re:pulp

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the issue here is that all of the books this machine will print are freely available as digital files. This device only encourages people to turn a benign set of bits into a stack of paper and ink. I've read project Gutenberg books online before, and agree that it is more pleasant to read printed word, but I think it's safe to assume that some percentage of people that would have read the digital text anyway will turn to printing these texts for convenience at some cost to the environment.

Re:pulp

[edwardpickman]

Paper is potentially one of the more enviromentally friendly materials availible. The problem is with how the environment is abused with the current system. Farmed trees contribute oxygen and clean polution from the air. Plain bookstyle paper is one of the easiest things to recycle. Cutting down old growth trees for paper is obscene. The timber industry is traditional similar mineral mining. They prefer the scorched earth approch because it's more profitable. Why spend $5 planting a tree when you can cut down existing ones for free. In a lot of areas the government actually builds roads for the timber companies to more easily cut down trees on public land. Paper and lumber can be grown and harvested responsibly. The timber industry will only do it kicking and screaming though. I heard one actually trying to defend clear cutting as good for a forest. Might as well say extinction is good for species. Even todays "selective cutting" involves cutting down all commercial sized trees. Except for the great plains and the deserts of the southwest the country used to be one large forest. In a couple of hundred years we've managed cut down nearly all the old growth trees. Only a few percent remain and the timber industry is fighting to cut down that last few percent.

Re:pulp

[orkysoft]

Paper is made from trees that are planted explicitly for the purpose of making paper. They are re-planted after they are harvested. They don't chop down rainforests to make paper. They chop down rainforests to make Big Macs.

Also, growing trees eat up a lot of CO2, and as long as the paper isn't burned, the carbon stays put in there.

And to top it all off: paper is an incredibly useful tool, because it enables us to read and write, with few dependencies.

My philosophy is that paper that is used for some purpose, is not wasted.

Re:pulp

[ArsSineArtificio]

Except for the great plains and the deserts of the southwest the country used to be one large forest. In a couple of hundred years we've managed cut down nearly all the old growth trees. Only a few percent remain and the timber industry is fighting to cut down that last few percent.

On the other hand, since the United States has undergone massive reforestation in the last century, this doesn't seem like a permanent problem. The taking of marginal land out of agricultural production has meant an enormous increase in secondary forest.

I also think that it is extremely unlikely that a paper company would purchase expensive old-growth timber to make into paper, rather than the cultivated rapid-growing softwoods which timber companies raise.

Re:pulp

[Anonymous Coward]

"and the machine is powered by the flow of tears from green party members."

Yes! Yesss!! Oh, let me taste your tears, greenies! Mm, your tears are so yummy and sweet.

Re:pulp

[Steve001]

CatoNine wrote:

Don't worry, your precious trees will be saved when the high-contrast e-paper reader panels become omnipresent (soon). The only environtmental pollution will be trashed PoD vending machines...

E-paper reader panels are already here. I have the new Sony e-book reader and the screen looks about as good as paper. The screen is slightly grey which makes it easier to read than bright white paper, and unlike PDA screens it does not have to be backlit to be visible. In fact, it doesn't have a backlight and relies on the same lighting as regular books. The screen resolution is high enough to allow you to read graphic novels and manga on the device.

Although print-on-demand books have potential, they still have the problem of having to store the actual books. Electronic books offer advantages over printed books: the advantage of instant availability and the advantage of not having to store a physical book.

Central storage of books offer advantages, but most people have a need to have an actual copy of the book, ready for immediate access without the need to contact an external system. In the same way, what makes an e-book work for me is the ability to carry the e-book with me on my own reader device, just as I can carry a conventional book. I don't have to be tied to reading them on my computer.

One word:

[Wilson_6500]

Neller predicts that within about five years On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed...

Textbooks

Re:One word:

[EtherealStrife]

heh my initial thought too.

the production cost is about a penny per page

Last quarter I had an open notes (but closed laptop) exam that covered around 500 pages of online material. After binding that was almost 30 bucks, but damn 5 bucks if I ordered through this thing, and printed in minutes? Even if you doubled the pages to make the font legible that would be a steal.

Re:One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

art books
technical manuals
any books with photographs
reproductions of historical books and manuscripts
books with unique fonts (or non-arabic script)
graphic novels
most children's books
etc
etc
etc

Re:One word:

[Rei]

I'd wager that this system's pricing is like Lulu's: a per-page cost, then a binding cost (depending on the binding type and cover size), and then if you're not nearby, obviously, a shipping cost.

Re:One word:

[aussie_a]

graphic novels

Can this thing deal with images as well as text? Or is it limited to text?

Re:One word:

[witchgirl]

It does laminated coloured covers, so it probably can print out images too within the book. That would be helpful for textbooks and more physics- or children-minded books too, they do contain diagrams and such that would need some image handling printing to be able to be printed properly.

Re:One word:

[Legion303]

"but damn 5 bucks if I ordered through this thing"

No. A penny per page is the *production* cost--what it costs the machine's owner in raw materials and electricity to print. Also it appears to be currently limited to the sort of books you can get on Project Gutenberg (i.e., public domain).

Re:One word:

[EtherealStrife]

Most of the online materials I draw on are publicly available and reproducible journal articles, but limited to non-profit reproduction and for academic purposes (the going standard, from what I've encountered in the informatics and compsci fields). My uni's copy center runs at a slight loss after staffing (the staff are paid through fa work programs, to justify the loss), so there's no profit to be had. As for the vending machines, it really depends on how they're run. If they're purchasable by organizations for nonprofit use (colleges, libraries, etc) then the production cost would be the only cost to the end user. However, if it's a true vending machine there would be severe limitations on what could legally be printed. The article mentioned Google's ethically (and perhaps legally) questionable project as a source of printables, and if these were being sold for a profit I don't see On Demand Books making it through the storm of lawsuits. The article mentioned debuts at bookstores, which implies the latter method. :( It's a shame companies are so often too greedy for their own good.

Re:One word:

[Robotech_Master]

The product demonstration video notes that consumers can bring in their own books to have printed and bound, too. Since the gizmo doesn't have any way of determining the copyright legalities of something a consumer wants to print, presumably it would operate under the same principles as self-service copiers at Kinko's: You're not supposed to violate copyright with them, but nobody's really looking over your shoulder to keep you from doing so.

Google Books could indeed be a source of printable material for this gizmo. Bear in mind that Google will only provide full text for books that are verifiably in the public domain; for everything else, presumably they might cut a deal with the publisher so the publisher would get profits from a consumer purchasing a POD copy of it. This could actually be a pretty big boon to publishers who couldn't afford to keep older books in print with full-sized runs but would still like to profit from them. Remember, the long tail and all that.

Likewise, printable-on-demand books could come from any ebook vendor who didn't restrict the use of their books via DRM. And heck, it would be great for printing out and binding the sold-as-PDF books you can buy cheaply from on-line roleplaying game shops, or the included-only-as-PDFs instruction manuals on a lot of hardware and software these days.

Re:One word:

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

A shipping cost from a vending machine?

or

[sporkme]

...or have it in digital format for half the price. Plug up a USB compliant storage device (cellphone for instance) and you own it in seven seconds, not seven minutes. If seven seconds is too long, you can download it later from your GoogleBooks account. Your fifteen year old Okidata laser printer could print it, but why waste paper like one of those stupid machines.

Re:or

[fortunato]

Probably because books are a handy, cheap format to have information in. I can sit in my hot tub and read a book. I won't do that with my latest electronic gizmo of the day. Its cheaper to replace the book than my gizmo if I accidentally drop what I'm reading in the water. And I can always just dry out the book and it still "works." ;)

Re:or

[sporkme]

And nobody will ever invent a reading gizmo that is bathtub friendly, that's for sure. Do you really soak in a tub and read on a regular basis? It is pretty damned clear to me that this is not going to be an issue in the fairly near future.

People that are proud to own actual copies of actual books will continue to purchase the Real Deal(TM) and not some convenience machine regurgitation. The only toe-hold on sustainability I can see for such a marketing scheme is in airports, for about seven years.

This concept just feels a bit like a photo booth at a mall or amusement park - a nice novelty but not particularly common or successful.

Re:or

[Paranoia Agent]

Put the book vending machine in your tub. I know this is impactical, especially if you enjoy longer books.

Re:or

[belg4mit]

Depends on the culture, photo booths are prevalent in France (think plot of Amelie).
They're at many malls and train/subway stations. They seem to be the standard format
for (self-supplied!) pictures for IDs.

Re:or

[Rei]

The situation isn't that simple. Lets look at some of the "PoD People" out there.

  * Would-be authors: For every one book that's published, there's a hundred that aren't. There is a huge glut of supply in books. This drives a lot of authors to desperation. Many turn to vanity presses, foolishly hoping to get big. They think that they have what it takes to be the next J.K. Rowling. They don't. Yes, there are problems with the publishing industry. Much of what makes a bestseller has to do with promotion. But if you can't get a big house to read you or an agent to sign you, odds are bloody good that your work is not that good.

Lower PoD cost will make their day, and hopefully push vanity presses out of business.

For those not familiar with the term, a "Vanity" press is a publisher that you pay to print and (supposedly) promote your book. The reality is that they have no incentive for you to make it big, and so just overcharge you for printing. Lulu and cafepress are a less scummy version of "self publishing": they tend to act only as printers. You'll still go nowhere, but you'll blow less of your money in doing so. This is just the next step.

  * Legitimate publishers: There are some very messed up things in the way that the print world works currently, and it ends up wasting a lot of money.

1) Print run size guestimates. Publishers have to guess at how much a book is going to sell. The larger they guess, the cheaper the unit cost is, but the more likely they'll get stuck with a warehouse full of unsold books. The hope is that PoD will make producing a single book cost the same as producing a large number of books, and that they can produce them as orders come in. One big beneficiary will be small-time authors: if a publisher isn't taking as much of a risk, they can take on more clients and ones less likely to hit it big.

2) Returns. This is a really silly thing about the industry. Big book chains not only get big discounts, but they also get obscenely kind return policies. If a seller orders a bunch of books, they can return them at the publisher's expense if they don't sell. They can do this with a large chunk of their total inventory. Indie bookstores can do this too, but not as much. This blows a huge amount of money in shipping costs. Miss Snark (one of the most famous agent bloggers) once complained about a bookstore that was relocating across the street who simply returned most of their books, then reordered them at the across the street location. Most returns won't get resold, so they're just waste. Cost-effective PoD could seriously alter this situation.

The key is the phrase cost-effective. Cost-effective includes quality as well.

Re:or

[badspyro]

Last time I checked (although that WAS a while ago), Bloomsbury WAS a small publising company, and one that was not particulaly high on J.K Rowlings list of publishers.
Just because some doesn't get published doesn't mean that the book isn't good, it just means that the publisher doesn't think it can be profitable.

Re:or

[kfg]

Your fifteen year old Okidata laser printer could print it, but why waste paper like one of those stupid machines.

Because a good book is not a waste of paper and my 1895 printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland works just as well today as the day it was new.

Of course it's hardbound. My paperback copy of The Blind Watchmaker is now effectively a loseleaf edition. We are Devo. Dee Eee Vee Ooh!

KFG

Re:or

[Robotech_Master]

Also, Eragon was originally published by a small publishing company formed by the author's parents.

A lot of small press companies are using print-on-demand to get their works printed, rather than contracting for traditional print services. The tabletop roleplaying game industry does this a lot, and also sells PDFs that gamers can buy and have printed and bound at Kinko's. Personally, I'd a lot rather have it printed and bound by one of those POD machines; given that the POD machine is supposed to produce a professional-quality book, it would probably be head and shoulders above what Kinko's turns out. Might even be cheaper too.

Re:or

[DerekLyons]

One big beneficiary will be small-time authors: if a publisher isn't taking as much of a risk, they can take on more clients and ones less likely to hit it big.

They are still taking a fairly good sized risk - editing and producing a book, along with promoting it still costs real money. Unlike printing costs (which can and are partially recouped by pulping and recycling returns), these costs are totally sunk.
 
In addition, from a bookstores POV, these machines are a *huge* risk - they are significant capital investments that will require the sale of many books to recoup the investment. From a publishers POV, the same applies - unless you are moving a lot of books, the capital investment is daunting.

Re:or

[value_added]

...or have it in digital format for half the price.

When was the last time you received a product manual and actually read the thing? Probably about the same time when they started being distributed exclusively in electronic form, right?

I've got a drive filled with everything from O'Reilly books in html, PDF versions of texts I purchased and didn't purchase, and a seemingly infinite amount of documentation that's too long to read on screen and too short or of too little interest to the unwashed mashes to merit being stocked in bookstore that serves lattes.

You can keep your e-whatever. I've already invested in a quality printer, but have no interest in purchasing and maintaining duplexing equipment, or binding equipment, or otherwise reading books constructed from letter sized paper. Or worse, curling up in bed a with a 3-ring binder. I am, however, interested in reading what I already have available. And the best format for that is still a book. If someone comes up with an easily accessible device that can take care of all this for me, my wallet's open.

And as for wasting paper, I can't think of a better use for paper (and, by extension, trees) than a printed book. And unlike your USB device, completely recyclable.

Re:or

[rucs_hack]

I spend a lot of my disposable income on books. The overwhelming majority of the books I buy are second hand, often over 30 years old, many over 50 (I'm a fan of old science fiction).

The idea of getting my books from a machine doesn't appeal one jot. I like to browse shelves and poke through boxes of books just arrived in my local secondhand bookshop.

It's a pleasant way to while away an hour, to select a nice looking book, get a coffee and sit in their reading area perusing my new find.

Vending machines in universities for textbooks perhaps, or chapters of books that students need (like that O'reilly scheme), yes, that I'd like, but not as a replacement of the bookstore, there's more to it then the product.

Re:or

[Anonymous Coward]

"And nobody will ever invent a reading gizmo that is bathtub friendly, that's for sure."

I've been wondering whether the solution to this for me might be to get a cheap PDA on ebay and put it in a ziplock bag (one of the ones with the double seal, and after testing it for leaks).

Re:or

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest difference between Lulu and a vanity publisher is that with Lulu, you retain your rights to your work and your ISBN #, period. Also, Lulu is great for people who just want to print like 5 books for their class room or their family. With a vanity publisher, you're signing 30 pages of contract that do everything to protect the publishers and put a fence around your rights. Yes, you retain the rights to your *original* work, but the $5,000 you paid the vanity publisher for an ISBN, editing, layout, etc. is theirs, they own the pdf. Yes, you could start over, but now you're out $5,000.

Re:or

[ncc74656]

Depends on the culture, photo booths are prevalent in France (think plot of Amelie). They're at many malls and train/subway stations. They seem to be the standard format for (self-supplied!) pictures for IDs.

How often do you need to supply your own photo for something like that? The only time I recall having to do that was for my passport, and you can do that with your own camera as long as the result meets certain technical requirements. IIRC, passports are good for at least ten years. For your driver's license, the DMV has its own photo equipment. Ditto for the registrar's office and your student ID, if you're still in college.

Re:or

[belg4mit]

Often enough that they're there. Again though, if you could actually read I said FRANCE.
You know, that country one would assume you hate without having ever visited (based
upon your home page)?

Re:or

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

They think that they have what it takes to be the next J.K. Rowling. They don't.

Unless they're Barty Crouch.

Re:or

[Robotech_Master]

You know, if you just put a ziplock baggie around whatever reading gizmo you're using, then you can read in the tub quite happily and not have to worry about getting water spots on paper pages.

Re:or

[Reziac]

That's an excellent thought. Authors who are having a tough time getting published could upload a digital copy of their manuscript into a central location, which the machines could access and print as needed. Then the author gets a royalty for each copy in much the usual way; or you might set it up as the system keeps a commission and the author gets the rest. (I'm not sure how that would differ legally.) No publisher, agent, or any other intermediaries required. And if their book never sells, the worst it does is waste a trivial amount of disk space (an average book is well under one MB, even with extensive formatting.)

For a much lower fee, the machine might also be set up to download the digital copy to any flash device (and perhaps in any of several formats)-- bring your own USB gadget, stick in a dollar, and it dumps the file onto your device. Hmm, there's where a commission rather than a royalty would be in order, since obviously the price can't be lower than the royalty.

This machine would be really handy for books that are in periodic high demand by students, too. No more long waits for a much-reserved book!

The manufacturer has a website

[Robotech_Master]

I'm surprised the writeup didn't include the manufacturer's website, which includes a Quicktime movie of the machine in operation. It's a pretty neat-looking machine, though considerably larger than the "ATM for books" illustration that they came up with for the news story would suggest—about the size of one of those huge printers that sit behind the counter at Kinko's.

Re:The manufacturer has a website

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Nice. They did a good job of making it look like something from an early 1980's space adventure television series. I'm thinking Buck Rogers...

Re:The manufacturer has a website

[elgatozorbas]

Thanks for the link! From the video it appears that then put together different machinery they were already producing. This gives the machine a more or less homebrew touch. I also wonder how reliable it is. Considering the number of paper jams in average copiers, I fear the worst. Not something I would leave unattended all day. But a cool machine nevertheless!

Seven minutes, But I want it now!

[rumplet]

Actually I was sort of hoping for a device the size of a novel that opens out and has two e-ink pages, godly battery life, huge solid state memory, with no "features", just basic navigation to flip pages and change book files.

Vending machine books is not an obvious idea, but in my opinion it's not very useful either.

Re:Seven minutes, But I want it now!

[rumplet]

Oh and don't post a link to the Sony LIBRIe. Look how cluttered that thing is with the qwerty keyboard, not to mention the retail price.

Ebook readers just aren't "there yet"

Re:Seven minutes, But I want it now!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the e-ink one is it? I didn't see any keyboard on that, looks just like a couple buttons to turn the pages and adjust the display. And its e-ink. Too bad its loaded with Sony DRM and memory sticks and the like.

Put them in the schools...

[__aaclcg7560]

The Harry Potter books should go quickly and raised money for after school activities.

Re:Put them in the schools...

[fanboyslayer]

Raise enough money to make up the $50,000 the machine costs to begin with?

Re:Put them in the schools...

[__aaclcg7560]

I've seen some school districts spend millions on a new sports facility instead of reducing classroom size. Go figure.

Instant books? What about instant magazines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the possibilities for instant magazines? In waiting rooms, on airplanes, etc. Plus, instant magazines might do better if it's anything like the Internet. *cough* pornography *cough*

Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover

[yosofun]

"The machine can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes, including full-color laminated covers."

Does this mean I can get a copy of Mein Kamft, hardbound and set in Comin Sans... with a bunny rabbit cover... in seven minutes?

Re:Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover

[Anonymous Coward]

come back after you learn the name of the book and the name of the font

Re:Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover

[NosTROLLdamus]

You should exercise a little "Comin Sans" and get a browser with a god damned spell checker.

Re:Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover

[Savage-Rabbit]

Does this mean I can get a copy of Mein Kamft, hardbound and set in Comin Sans... with a bunny rabbit cover... in seven minutes?

Why would you want a Ford owner's repair manual in a bunny rabbit cover?

Re:Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover

[wayward_bruce]

You can't get a copy of Mein Kamft unless you write it yourself. Same goes for "comin sans" font; you'd have to design it first.

Pffft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called hemp. Paper. Slap in some hemp paper and the hippies will quiet down. Now just to find a cheap source of hemp.

This trick never works

[DerekLyons]

A machine like this has debuted every other year or so for about the last decade - they have significantly failed to reach either their technical promises (producing crappy quality books) or their commercial goals. (You have to sell a lot of books to make back your initial investment.)
 
Print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem.

Re:This trick never works

[aussie_a]

Print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem.

Actually it isn't. Its a solution people refuse to invest in. Imagine if Marvel and DC Comics made available all of their old comics through PoD. No more out of print comics. Imagine if books that are now out of print, were actually made available through PoD. No more out of print books.

No, PoD is definitely a solution for a very real problem. The only thing stopping it from taking off is publishers and copyright holders.

Re:This trick never works

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Silly reasoning. Stuff goes out of print because the publisher chooses to obsolete the material. They can't make money off of new stuff and charge new prices for it if people are constantly buying up the old material.

They wouldn't be able to charge a premium on the older stuff like they do now (as collecter's editions or whatever) if they did not restrict the quantity.

Publishing is a racket. I don't really see a demand for this, either.

Re:This trick never works

[DerekLyons]

Print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem.

Actually it isn't. Its a solution people refuse to invest in.

Try reading what I wrote - POD machines have debuted to much fanfare every other year or so for over a decade. Millions of dollars have been invested in them - and all of it to date lost because either the machines made crappy (physical) quality books, or it turned out that there wasn't a demand.
 
 

Imagine if Marvel and DC Comics made available all of their old comics through PoD. No more out of print comics. Imagine if books that are now out of print, were actually made available through PoD. No more out of print books.

Books generally go out of print for a reason - because the demand for them sinks below a profitable level and/or interest in them drops to near zero. There's a reason why you can still buy (brand new) copies of Pride and Prejudice, but finding a copy of some random best seller from the 70's can be difficult.
 
 

No, PoD is definitely a solution for a very real problem. The only thing stopping it from taking off is publishers and copyright holders.

If you'd presented a description of the problem it solves - I'd say you are correct. But you didn't. (Airy handwaving about imaginary worlds isn't describing a problem.) I also note the arguement weakening note of invoking one of Slashdot's favorite bogeymen - Evil Conspiracies.

Re:This trick never works

[aussie_a]

Books generally go out of print for a reason - because the demand for them sinks below a profitable level

With the case of PoD there is no money lost, see Lulu as a successful example (not talking about vending machine PoDs).

Try reading what I wrote - POD machines have debuted to much fanfare every other year or so for over a decade. Millions of dollars have been invested in them - and all of it to date lost because either the machines made crappy (physical) quality books, or it turned out that there wasn't a demand.

A) Those are only one type of people that need to invest B) Fair point ;)

If you'd presented a description of the problem it solves - I'd say you are correct. But you didn't. (Airy handwaving about imaginary worlds isn't describing a problem.)

Funny, I said enough for you to realise what the problem was: Books falling to such a low interest that traditional publishing means are no longer profitable. But here I'm talking about PoD in general, rather then these vending machines.

Re:This trick never works

[Anonymous Coward]

POD machines have debuted to much fanfare every other year or so for over a decade

But get cheaper every year. I remember when a laser printer cost that much. Now _I_ could (just about) afford one of these machines myself, just to have for printing out
interesting stuff I find on-line.

Paul Graham's "On Lisp" has been out-of-print for years. Paul graciously made it available on-line. But it's too long for me to print out on my current printer sanely...

Re:This trick never works

[Prof.Phreak]

I wonder what happens if this thing gets a paperjam, and you've already deposited your $5.

Also, don't ``mass market paperbacks'' sell for $5-$10 anyway? So why bother with these things?

Re:This trick never works

[DerekLyons]

If you'd presented a description of the problem it solves - I'd say you are correct. But you didn't. (Airy handwaving about imaginary worlds isn't describing a problem.)

Funny, I said enough for you to realise what the problem was: Books falling to such a low interest that traditional publishing means are no longer profitable.

The problem with this problem is... it's not really a problem. As I said, these (POD, not just the POD vending) machines have been introduced (multiple) times as a solution to this 'problem' - but have failed each time. This suggests to me that the problem doesn't actually exist.

Re:This trick never works

[EvanED]

Books generally go out of print for a reason - because the demand for them sinks below a profitable level and/or interest in them drops to near zero.

Which is *exactly* where POD shows its most promise. Without the costs of shipping and stocking the item, things that were not profitable before can become profitable.

Re:This trick never works

[Woldry]

Because there are thousands of titles that aren't available in mass market paperback (or trade paperback, or hardcover) because they've gone out of print. Bringing things back into print for a single-copy run is an exciting prospect to me. I can't wait to print myself the entire run of the Rick Brant Science-Adventure mysteries.

Re:This trick never works

[aussie_a]

This suggests to me that the problem doesn't actually exist.

Or it could be necessary the copyright holders simply refuse to put their works in PoD.

Re:This trick never works

[DerekLyons]

Books generally go out of print for a reason - because the demand for them sinks below a profitable level and/or interest in them drops to near zero.

Which is *exactly* where POD shows its most promise. Without the costs of shipping and stocking the item, things that were not profitable before can become profitable.

In some alternate reality where the costs of shipping and stocking are the only costs involved - sure. The problem is, in the real world, things are not so simple.

Re:This trick never works

[DerekLyons]

Disclaimer: I've been a printer, a publisher, and a bookseller at various points of my career. I'm not making this stuff up, but am speaking from experience.
 
 

This suggests to me that the problem doesn't actually exist.

Or it could be necessary the copyright holders simply refuse to put their works in PoD.

That's quite possible - because it will cost money to get them ready for the PoD machine, money that is extremely unlikely to be recouped. Any given book will almost certainly have to be reformatted - which isn't cheap if done professionally. If it's not done professionally, then the book ends up unattractive. (I.E. Project Gutenberg, or many, many small/vanity presses.) For a publisher, there is also the legal problem that they might not own the rights to redistribute in a new format - which means incurring costs in obtaining those rights. It's not as simple as many seem to think.

Keep in mind that outside of the collectors market, the demand for out of print books is (on an individual book basis) very low (1) - and the demand outside of that market is currently easily satisified by visiting your local used and rare bookstore, or sites like bookfinder.com or Amazon. Thus, from Day One, the PoD operator is competing in a mature and heavily populated marketplace - and he's competing at a disadvantage because of his high startup and capital costs.
 
In the end these POD machines keep failing in the marketplace because they don't effectively fill any niche. (As I said, a solution in search of a problem.) Its not an Evil Conspiracy - its simple economics.
 
(1) Yes, I know about the Long Tail theory - but that theory applies to markets, it breaks down somewhat when you move from that theoretical application to the actual dollars-and-cents application of the individual physical item.

Re: How they are wrong

[bluefoxlucid]

You also forgot to mention that we have laws that state that when you cut a tree down in the US, you need to plant 2 more somewhere. These laws theoretically need to be changed because the number of trees will slowly grow; but in reality, all the trees you plant won't grow, and when they get too dense they compete for light and ground resources and some die. Either way, we're not really net killing trees.

Re: How they are wrong

[aussie_a]

I think the point for tree huggers is we're cutting down trees faster then we're planting them (I believe proof of this is seen by more and more nature preserves being opened up to tree loggers, but I may be wrong).

Sony Reader

[Aexia]

seems to be what you're looking for.

Re:Sony Reader

[thre5her]

I'd pay for an e-ink monitor. With no backlight, the Sony reader is super-easy on the eyes, and its font rendering looks sexy. I could use an LCD for movies.

That has to be a prototype

[Animats]

Watched the video. The binder is huge, slow, and has way too many moving parts. Far too much paper handling. Looks like a prototype, too.

Worse, the price/performance is terrible. This $50,000 mechanical nightmare can only bind about 60 books per hour. Compare this IBIS automatic binder, which can produce 6000 books per hour; 12000 if you get some extra options.

A more fundamental question: Perfect bound books are made by doing a binding job that isn't perfect, then cutting off the edges to make the block of paper uniform. Maybe it would be easier to develop a better way of aligning the paper and using paper that's dimensionally uniform.

Re:That has to be a prototype

[argStyopa]

I think you're missing the point. Yes, this is an ALPHA model of the device, as the website clearly states.

The key technologies here are
a) the printers are capable of processing subsequent jobs while still producing a current job
b) all machine settings flow from a data file associated with a particular book format
c) your raw inputs are paper, ink/toner, and cover stock (and data). That's it.

How much is one of those IBIS machines? You'd need at least the SB3-4 to do the job, and in that case you have to feed it with
- printed covers
- printed pages of the right format
- changed settings for every book.

Yes, there is too much paper handling, twisting, turning, flipping, etc. Clearly an alpha model that's a proof-of-concept more than a saleable unit. I don't see how they would avoid the milling process, unless they stock (for example) 2 papersources in the machine; otherwise, if they only use a single size sheet (of less than A4) how would they cope with full page illustrations? I guess optimal would be 3 paper sizes - medium quarto, medium octavo, and some average 'paperback' size. But you're probably still going to have a lot of milling, waste, noise, and dust.

Obviously they'd like to see preorders roll in (or even interest) from potential customers before going further. I'm guessing this development has already cost them quite a bit and they're not sure if there's a market.

I think that the main limitation of this is that the books it produces are going to be throwaways - about the quality of a cheap mass-market paperback. Might be good for one full reading or less, before the pages start falling out. The IBIS machines, on the other hand, clearly make superior stitched books, with multiple signatures bound to form the book.

That's probably their market-question: will people pay a reasonable, profit making price for a public-domain book that's of inferior construction, when you can get quite nice volumes of just about everything from companies like Penguin already?

Re:That has to be a prototype

[g2devi]

I think you're missing the point.

Book stores have a huge inventory and a huge number of surplus books that need to be sold at cut-rate prices. There's a lot of waste in the system. Worse than that, despite all the inventory, book stores don't always have the books you need (they have a limited property size). Even worse than that, because storing books or printing them on demand at the big IBIS places is so expensive, books go out of print if they're not popular enough and if you happen to want/need one of these rare gems, tough bananas.

These machines may be slow and they may not be as cost effective as the IBIS books, but they get rid of a whole lot of waste and they allow for a near infinite selection of books. And is waiting 1 minute really that bad? If you're in a book store during the rush hour, it could easily take 10 times that to go through the line and pay for your books.

It's a trade off that works out well for bookstores (at least until someone comes us with a cheap laser printer that does book bindings and covers at comparable speeds or someone comes up with an electronic book reader that is cheap, light, readable, and has all the tangible qualities of hard bound books).

It's not much different between the FPGA versus ASIC trade off in chip design. FPGAs are expensive per unit and slow and take up a lot of space, but they can be reprogrammed quickly and cheaply using cheap tools. ASICs are cheap per unit and fast and compact, but they require a huge cost and time overhead to reprogram and require expensive equipment to do it. So FPGAs are fanatic for one-offs and experimenting, while ASICs are fantastic for bulk production that rarely changes. This is one reason, many manufactures initially ship using FPGAs (even though they cost more and take up more space) and ship to ASICs once they know they have a winner.

Re:That has to be a prototype

[Anonymous Coward]

> So FPGAs are fanatic for one-offs

Obviously, I mean, FPGAs are fantastic for one-offs.

Re:That has to be a prototype

[Robotech_Master]

Apples and oranges. The IBIS binder is industrial-grade equipment, meant to be used by a POD print shop. The Espresso is supposed to be a miniature, one-off print shop all by itself. It won't be able to do books as rapidly as an industrial operation, but it will also be accessible to the average consumer where a print shop would be too costly and time-consuming.

Besides, the video notes that depending on the speed of printer and so forth that is used in the Espresso, it could go as quickly as one completed book per minute.

Re:That has to be a prototype

[Animats]

The Espresso is supposed to be a miniature, one-off print shop all by itself.

That's what it's supposed to be, but it's not miniature enough. It's almost as big as the IBIS, which has 100x the speed. At the other end of the scale, there are many semi-automatic desktop hand binders that require some operator work but can bind about a book a minute. This new device combines the size, cost and complexity of the big machines with the low throughput of a desktop binder. And all you get out is a glue-bound paperback book.

If they can't make it small and cheap, they should go for a better product. Build a machine that makes quality saddle-stitched hardcover books on demand. Now your product commands 3x the retail price, but costs maybe 1.5x to make.

Re:That has to be a prototype

[CAIMLAS]

Yep. I couldn't help but think about an episode of the old Superman serial - the black and white original one - in which someone invented a machine which could make a block of gold. But it made that gold block out of twice as much platinum.

The only thing I can see this having any utility in is "print it yourself" publishing. It'd have it's niche, I think - but, for the most part, it'd probably just serve those who want 5 copies of their "novel" (a hodgepodge result formed from random neuron collisions and synaptic suicides).

Next invention:

[Travoltus]

DRM paper.

Books printed in vending machines that will self destruct in one year and which will automatically shut down copy machines trying to duplicate it.

Re:Next invention:

[mumblestheclown]

which would be great, as it would allow publishers to have the option of offering items at a lower cost to the consumer for the same reason that the "all you can eat" salad bar at TGI fridays costs more than a single side-salad.

Of course, this is slashdot, so the response that I can expect will be "the companies will use this as an excuse to jack up the prices - aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.

Re:Next invention:

[Anonymous Coward]

Flawed analogy. A salad is a consumable item that is eaten. A single track of music is something that does disappear upon the conclusion of listening to it.

DRM is an artificial restriction to degrade the normal freedoms one has with music. A serving of salad is limited by definition.

Re:Next invention:

[Fool_Errant]

I believe in markets, so let me point out that I understand that it is an attempt to jack up prices. A lack of DRM means that copying is essentially free and that improvement on the basic design may be possible, and profits based on that may accrue to someone other than the "rights holder," which cuts into the rights holder's pocketbook, as it is in their best interest to be able to force others to pay the rights holder to make such improvements. Beyond that It enables one to selectively decide to force other people to pay for products they may have not needed/wanted directly in addition to that which they do. In so doing, it allows the "rights holder" to force a person to pay twice for what they previously had paid for only once, while at the same time, in combination with the licensing rules, preventing others from making improvements that would negate such needs. Additionally, due to the problem of short-term downward inflexibility of nominal prices... when switching from a DRM-free system to a DRMed one, its probably unlikely that one will decrease prices by a margin large enough to make DRM financially viable, especially once one considers the problem with DRM that any given "rights management" scheme (patents are included here...) has to be crackable to be useful. By the way, that increased effective nominal income will then become the baseline for future price increases, as profits have probably increased, so over long scales, DRM becomes ever more appealing. So yeah, DRM IS an excuse to jack up prices while at the same time crippling functionality. It's meant to force inventors to pay, users to pay, people making transfers to pay, admins to pay, non-users to pay... It's a "make once, get paid umpteen times" strategy.

Re:Next invention:

[Reality Master 101]

aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.

Unfortunately, things like this aren't subject to market forces like salads. There are multiple places I can buy a salad, which creates competition to force down prices. With a book (or music), there is only a single source for that particular book. To use the salad analogy, it would be as if only one restaurant offered salads. If you didn't like the price of the salad, you only had the option of getting a sandwich elsewhere. That's some amount of price competition, but not the same way.

Personally, I think it'd be interesting if production and distribution of media had to be split by law -- both couldn't be owned by the same people.

Too slow

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Buy two books. Wait 15 minutes? This won't fly.

Re:Too slow

[AuMatar]

It will- for rare books and out of prints. If I'm looking for a book by my favorite author, I'll happily wait 15 minutes, rather than be told its out of stock and needs to be special ordered.

Re:Too slow

[Robotech_Master]

Actually, the video said that depending on the speed of the printers that were used, it might theoretically be able to be as fast as one book per minute. Presumably the one book in seven minutes is the speed that the prototype that's been in operation since March is able to deliver.

Re:Too slow

[Anonymous Coward]

and find out 16 minutes later the book's last chapters are illegible due to the printer running out of ink. (I know I'd flip through the first book I bought like this)

Re:Too slow

[WFFS]

There is a book by an Australian author that still hasn't come out in Australia, a year after it was published. I'm not going to pay an arm and a leg to ship it out from the US, so this is a great alternative for those books you otherwise have to wait for.

Re:Too slow

[dj42]

Looks like we've got ourselves a reader. I'd rather stab my eyes out than wait 15 minutes for someone to print a sub-standard crap edition of a book I'm going to buy.

Re:Too slow

[Planesdragon]

Looks like we've got ourselves a reader. I'd rather stab my eyes out than wait 15 minutes for someone to print a sub-standard crap edition of a book I'm going to buy.

So, you either:

1: Buy exclusively hardcover, thus missing a good majority of the works ever printed (not necessarily a bad thing; you might be down to only 60% crap) and paying a good 300% over the standard

2: Don't understand that your books are likely ALREADY printed using an identical process.

Either way, this thing won't fly (as it's been trying to for the last ten years now) if it doesn't meet the standard of quality.

Re:Too slow

[AussieVamp2]

Stab your eyes out, you would never need a printed book again. :)

Re:Too slow

[FlyingSquidStudios]

There are braille printers.

My vision is good, but I always wanted to learn braille so I could go to boring shit like obligatory plays friends put on and bring a book and read all through it but no one would know!

Re:Too slow

[MikeFM]

There are quite a number of books that I like that can no longer be found at all. I'd love to be able to just have this machine print me out copies instead of just waiting for the off chance of finding one some where.

Re:Too slow

[Anonymous Monkey]

I think this will get much faster. Back in the day (late 1980's) before the era of digital copiers Xerox made a machine that was called the (i think) 5090 that could print a book (bound and all) at 90ppm. The thing was 20 feet long monster but it worked well enough that when I worked with a copy shop in the early 00's lots of small operations were paying quite a bit to keep them going. To the best of my knowledge no one has made anything like it in the digital-copier era. That is until today.

Re:Too slow

[BakaHoushi]

But then someone would cut your hands off.

I'm reminded of a classic "Scary Door" (Twilight Zone parody) scene from Futurama:
Man: Ah, I'm the only man left alive... and now, I have all the time in the world to devote to my one TRUE love, books! *takes a book off the shelf, only to have his glasses fall off and break* NO! It's not fair! It's not fair! There was finally ti-- Hey, wait a minute, my eyesight isn't THAT bad. I can still read the large print. *his eyeballs fall out* AUGH! NO! ...Wait a second, I can still read braille! *His hands fall off* AHHHHHHHHH! *his tongue and head come off*

The moral of the story is, never hope or look on the bright side of life.

Re: How they are wrong

[name*censored*]

Once more, just like Europe is a social failure

Yes, and the US is going swimmingly, no-one's living below the poverty line there!

In Soviet Russia...

[TheCybernator]

..govt print the books.

Every book ever written....

[Mogster]

Now if only it could tap into L-Space. Imagine access to every book ever written.

And if we could expand on the science of Invisible Writings, access to every book that *may* have yet to be wrote.

Ponder Stibbons if you're listening....

Re: How they are wrong

[kfg]

Either way, we're not really net killing trees.

Well of course not, silly. You have to long line for trees.

KFG

I thought about this earlier this year

[Skythe]

I was at university with a friend who happens to go to a catholic university, who decided to tease me about all our junky food vending machines. My reply was something along the lines of "Better than bible vending machines (joking)". But does anyone actually know of any obscure vending machines like that?

We also have a coffee machine that is notorious for making anything but coffee. Of the 3 times i used it, first it gave me coffee with no milk, second it gave me coffee without a cup (which was quite embarrasing, and no i did not press the "byo mug" button) and the third time also yielded coffee with no milk.

Re:I thought about this earlier this year

[Rix]

Was it almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee?

Re:I thought about this earlier this year

[kjart]

We also have a coffee machine that is notorious for making anything but coffee. Of the 3 times i used it, first it gave me coffee with no milk, second it gave me coffee without a cup (which was quite embarrasing, and no i did not press the "byo mug" button) and the third time also yielded coffee with no milk.

This famous non-coffee making coffee machine seems to have a problem - it makes coffee.

Re:I thought about this earlier this year

[Romberg]

Get AJ Rimmer to work on it and you'll get black currant cordial, with blancmange, 2 creams and and a suger.

Re:I thought about this earlier this year

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

Hey, I like the idea of Bible vending machines. I'd like them everywhere.
All we need is a way to get people to use them.

Re: How they are wrong

[node 3]

You also forgot to mention that we have laws that state that when you cut a tree down in the US, you need to plant 2 more somewhere. ... Either way, we're not really net killing trees. Because two saplings >= a full-grown tree?

Book vending machine?

[drsquare]

Imagine this: You put your $5 in, wait an entire seven minutes for it to print, then the book gets stuck in the coil and doesn't drop down.

Re:Book vending machine?

[Tablizer]

Imagine this: You put your $5 in, wait an entire seven minutes for it to print, then the book gets stuck in the coil and doesn't drop down.

Combine it with that fricken coffee machine that always jams, and the book will come pre-spilled with coffee even.

Reminds of a joke: A cop sees a man pounding and tilting a book vending machine after it jams. The cop arrests the man for vandlism. On the way to the police station, the cop asks the man what book got stuck. The man replies, "It was called, 'Tips for Controlling Your Temper'".

So how many..

[mikkelm]

LoC/sec would that be? C'mon, we need a meaningful metric here!

550 Page Limit?

[changyang1230]

One thing for sure, this machine can't print Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Re:550 Page Limit?

[Duds]

Being pedantic, we don't know how long that book'll be.

You are right in that it couldn't do Goblet of Fire (636 pages), Order of the Phoenix (766 pages) or Half blood prince (607 pages).

Japan (OT)

[EL Malloc]

Japan's vending machines serve hot drinks and alcoholic beverages.

Re:Japan (OT)

[really?]

...and batteries and flowers and umbrellas and underwear and sexy edible underwear and rice and vids and manga and porn and booze and ... I could go on and on and on and on ...

And it'll be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

within about five years On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed.'

errrr... every Public Domain book that's ever been printed. And scanned. And proofread....

And the "content" industries will be beavering away buying more copyright laws to lock up content till the stars turn to iron...

Re:And it'll be illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Book publishers are, more or less, on the side of good in this fight, so I think you have it wrong.

For example, I was buying eBooks off of Fictionwise long before anybody was selling music downloads. Fictionwise mostly offered and still offers PDF downloads that are almost completely unencumbered. (They often have silly prohibitions against printing which are easy to work around, but nothing ties the document to a single machine.)

The Baen Free Library offers a lot of Baen titles for free, even though they're still in print. Baen's WebScription offers a huge number of titles for electronic purchase.

Now, Baen is an extreme case, but in general it seems that publishers are significantly ahead on the technology curve compared to their less-enlightened brethren. In fact, book publishers seem to be the most enlightened of any traditional media (possibly excepting newspapers) and I would not be surprised if a large number of publishers started licensing their libraries for use in these machines, if they ever become more than a curiosity.

Re: How they are wrong

[mike2R]

Either way, we're not really net killing trees.

Well of course not, silly. You have to long line for trees.

Especially killing trees. A killing tree will go through a steel reinforced net in less than a second, and will have your arm off unless you're lucky.

Re: How they are wrong

[mike2R]

Sigh, that doesn't actually make sense. Oh well, more coffee.

Cost per Page

[emj]

What I never get about these prin on demand things is how can they get the cost per page down. E.g. Laser printers may have a cost per page at about 0.05 cents, that would mean $27 for one 550 page book, that excludes the hardcover. Even if this thing 50% cheaper it's still very expensive..

But... When I was viisting South America there were lots of copy shops that printed A4 on both sides for 0.10 bolivianos * 275 page = $3.3, that's almost cheap enough. But these photocopiers were analog monster tuned and pruned, made from easily maintained parts with cheap ink.

Re:Cost per Page

[nickv111]

0.05 cents per page or 0.05 dollars per page? Ironically, even Slashdot readers are confusing the facts. I know we already went over this in a recent Slashdot post, and I'm probably just being picky, but here goes. . . 0.05 cents per page. Multiply by 550. We get 27.50. . . CENTS. In other words, we're multiplying $0.0005/page by 550 and getting $0.2750. I wouldn't mind paying $0.28 to print a book, quite honestly. Then again, the rest of your post was very true, but I couldn't help but point it out.

420 seconds????

[davidwr]

7 minutes? Can you give me something to read while I'm waiting?

Seriously, for novels, first 10 pages of Chapter 1 loose or stapled, then print the whole book while I get started.

Let's see, assuming all pages are printed 2-up and cut, and assuming 2 printed pages per second, that's 4 book-pages per second of printing time. 550 pages = just under 2:18. Add time for cutting and binding and time for the glue to dry and I could see 3-4 minutes for a 550-page book. If it's a 1 page/second printer, add another 2:18.

If you can do this in full-color on glossy paper in a reasonable period of time for a reasonable price, you will be able to print international magazines anywhere, with local advertising content. Remember, people like reading actual magazines more than they like reading PDFs.

5 cents per page or 0.05 cents per page?

[fantomas]

I think you mean 5 cents - 0.05 dollars per page? that would make 27.50 a book.

Re:5 cents per page or 0.05 cents per page?

[evilviper]

I think you mean 5 cents - 0.05 dollars per page?

It's not his fault. He works for Verizon...

And he's mistaken, anyhow.

His link to HP.com is for full COLOR print-outs, which is, at best, a tiny minority of the pages in almost all books.

Around 1 cent/page (black) isn't uncommon for professional units.

Sounds like a tool for bookstores + libraries

[192939495969798999]

While 5-10 minutes might be too long for a vending machine-to-individual interface, imagine if your favorite bookstore or library had a few of these. You could order a book they didn't have in stock and browse for a few minutes, and then pick it up instead of having to go elsewhere or maybe not get it at all (out of prints). That seems like the most obvious implementation.

Cellphones, PDAs

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like an interesting idea, but I prefer to read books on my cellphone. While the display is small, the text is still clear, and easy on my eyes scince it's LCD and Backlit. (lately CRTs have become murder on my eyes, so I would love to get an LCD monitor for my desktop. Alright, back to the subject). One of the biggest draw for using a pda/cellphone vs a conventional book is that
it has a very small form factor, and it's much easier to cart around than even a cheap paperback. I don't even buy newspapers anymore because the damn things are just so big and clumsy, esp. when riding the bus. As another poster said, most people who would buy a physical book would probaly do it at a book store.

Slow on the "draw"

[955301]

CNN missed the fact that this has been going on in Africa for some time now. I saw an article several years ago where they drive around in a truck something like this in the back.

But back to the topic at hand, can't we just get the electronic copies for the love of all that is holy in the world?. Is there ANY REAL reason where we can't just go to amazon.com, order a book, receive an email with a link and download it from there? I mean, if I want to read a chapter at the commode I can print it off myself. But usually, I'm near a computer or have my cell phone handy (little pun for all you German folk :).

Why are we still stuck with hardcopies and stores full of dead trees?

Re:Slow on the "draw"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are we still stuck with hardcopies and stores full of dead trees?

We're not, you just can't get them from Amazon, and the selection is somewhat more limited. Try Fictionwise, WebScription, or a number of other eBook sellers.

Unlike certain other content production industries which shall not be named, book publishers embraced electronic downloads early on. I was buying real magazines and stories from Fictionwise long before there was any legitimate source of downloads for these other industries.

Re:Slow on the "draw"

[Anonymous Coward]

can't we just get the electronic copies for the love of all that is holy in the world?. Because, I for one, don't enjoy the thought of needing a computer around to have to read a book I just bought.

Re:Slow on the "draw"

[cdrguru]

If there was any reason to believe that people wouldn't redistribute electronic books, this is certainly something that would have value. Unfortunately, it is just a fancy way to move books from being a revenue stream to being something distributed for free, like music is now.

Today, who pays for music? I don't - it is freely available. Some people seem to value posters and other little pieces of paper so pay for these. Me, all I am interested in is the sound and it comes in little files for free.

Moving books to the same environment would mean the same thing - some fools still buying e-books and the rest of the world getting them for free.

Re: How they are wrong

[kfg]

Oh well, more coffee.

Throw a bit of Jack Daniel's in the next one. You'll feel better all day. Trust me.

KFG

Xerox already did it

[nothermark]

Xerox has been selling the books on demand idea since they got digital printers working. The only thing added with this is the vending machine front end that let's one pick the book. Check out http://www.dngoodchild.com/front_pg_7-06.htm for commercial on demand printer of out of copyright books. BTW, 3 cents per page is for low volume Xerographic printing or maybe what color is approaching. B&W is around 1 cent per page on a large volume machine.

Hype

[Anonymous Coward]

"Reproduce every book ever printed in five years"
"Reproduction" in its most limited since would require a facsimile scan of every page-digitised text is not the same thing(makes your library of congress unit of measure quite a bit bigger than you think-digitise all those illustrated books for example)
There are huge numbers of books that no longer exist,many that exist but are "unknown" to libraries, few or single extant copies in the hands of institutions or private libraries/collections that will never be scanned.
Only a fraction of"every book ever printed" will ever be digitised in any form-much less as a facsimile.

Sounds Good

[ggKimmieGal]

This sounds like a great idea!... At an airport. I would really hate to see these filling up libraries.

Have this vision, I do

[way2trivial]

think about a bookshop that has 10k books, at about 5 copies of each. (standard everyday bookshop)

now imagine one that has 50k books, one copy of each.. you browse, and find the one you want.. buy it an walk out- they'll print another and put it on the shelf.

if you prefer to wait 7 minutes, they'll print a fresh one for you- with your name on it.

(PS I have a lotta scifi with original cover prices of 15-75 cents too.. but I'm also into this idea)

Re:Have this vision, I do

[rucs_hack]

For textbooks I would be instantly enamored of it, seriously, I'd love it at my Uni, but for my personal book buying habits it would be horrible.

Half the fun is browsing for me.

Re:Have this vision, I do

[way2trivial]

yer missing my point.. a standard bookshop has space for 50k books, with duplicates, that means you get to browse 10k titles.

IU'm suggesting, the POD store prints one of each of 50k titles, and puts them on the shelf.. you BROWSE THEM, if you find a keeper, you buy that keeper, or request a new copy for yourself if you have the time.-- advantage- now you have the ability to browse 5X the number of titles in the same space.

Re:Have this vision, I do

[rucs_hack]

ah, I see what you mean. Yes, that would be ok.

I do still like my old books, but Since I am a book addict anyhow, I guess I will be trying this thing out if it appears.

It's working now - just different

[nothermark]

Check out http://www.dngoodchild.com/bookgood2.htm They are a print on demand book publisher that has been around for a while. The problem I see is that the scanned pages may not be that good. Scanning and OCR correction take resources. Goodvhild and, I assume, other folks do it then charge for the service in the book cost. It's a great way to fill low volume demand. It is also how many technical manuals are produced today.

Book Store

[Gigadafud]

I do not know about you guys, but I will goto the book store, JUST to go. I can spend an hour looking at all kinds of books in a blink of an eye.

Paper vs. Bits Rant

[pipingguy]

Back in the old days of manual drafting it was pretty obvious if someone other than the original draftsman made changes to a drawing. This is no longer true - sure you can invoke the wrath of the IT people by demanding timestamps and backups in order to prove a point, but it's usually not worth the effort and headaches.

Plus the IT people are in control of the data, so any slip-ups on the part of "the machine", software or network are never their fault; it's always just a "system error" that never gets explained because asking why is discouraged. Just boot it back up and start again is the creed.

CAD drafting has created the mental meme that the next project will be just like the last one, only different. Since it's CAD, it'll be easy to duplicate. Real projects don't work that way, and the notion that they do tends to create a lower level of skill in the practitioners.

Wait until 2109

[tepples]

Call me as soon as they produce on of these that can print out Neil Stephenson tomes.

Based on law effective as of 2006 in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and an estimation of the expected life span of a healthy American writer, you may have to wait until 2110 for books whose author is Neal Stephenson to become available on a print-on-demand system.

550 pages

[LaughingCoder]

Hmmm, one wonders if this machine-dependent limitation will have the same effect on the future of books that the 74 minute CDs had on music. I suppose you could vary the font size to squeeze in more content, but beyond what can be gained by that you would probably have to break it up into volumes (like a 2 CD set).

Replenish-on-demand bookstores

[Jeff Duntemann]

Bookstores will actually be anxious to have these things in the basement or in the back room, simply to reduce the costs of carrying inventory. What we'll see over time is a sort of "replenish on demand" bookstore, in which single copies of books are present on the shelves for customers to flip through and purchase--and when that single copy is sold, the cash registers will send an order downstairs to start manufacturing another. Periodically, the newly-printed copies will be carried back upstairs and reshelved for the next customer to find.

What a system like this obviates is the need to manage warehouses full of fragile inventory (which one fire or flood can render worthless) and truck it around, often across hundreds or thousands of miles. A publisher will send repro files (at this stage in history, print PDFs) to the retailer's servers, from which the book machines can draw. The retailer will then pay the publisher for each copy printed. No returns, no warehouses. Bookstores limit their risk to a single copy of each title shelved, rather than hundreds or thousands as is now the case. Publishers limit their risk to content creation costs (acquisition, editing, and layout, plus promotion) and do not have to deal with the patholigical accounting caused by retailer returns.

Most modern book retailing is done by two large chains and a few small ones, plus debris. The larger chains have more than enough money to buy these machines and implement the systems, though it will take some time. Needless to say, Amazon will be hot to implement such a system as well.

I blogged about this back in October. See http://www.duntemann.com/october2006.htm#10-16-200 6

BTW, machines like this have existed for some time, and it's a little unclear to me why Espresso is special. The real idea here is putting them in libraries to print out take-home-and-keep copies of out-of-copyright books, and that may be less compelling than many people think. Mostly it makes it faster to get your own copy of Moby Dick than ordering one online.

On the other hand, if the libraries ever decide to cut deals with publishers and sell first-run titles at steep discounts, well, that would change book retailing utterly, and incite a war unlike any bookselling has ever seen.

Been there, done that...

[banerjek]

Neller predicts that within about five years On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed I wonder how much this Neller dude actually reads? Maybe the capacity will exist, but this prediction won't come to pass -- ever seen library circ statistics? In a large library, only a small percentage of books get checked out at all within a year, and many never get checked out over a period of decades.

People who can't get past the "books = good" logic seem hell bent on the idea that technology will change how libraries work. Electronic books have been around for years, and they've gone nowhere. After years of overhyped claims how they will transform services, the obsolete readers are unused.

There are a number of legit publishers and booksellers that already use PoD -- it's been around for years. It has its uses, but PoD is not a replacement for regular publishing which provides marketing, packaging, durable binding, and other services that are relevant to selling a quality product that people want.

If technology is the solution, why don't we access all books over the web with our credit cards at much lower cost than buying a book? There has been plenty of drivel about how you can reach everyone in the world with a web page. While technically true, something needs to happen for them want to read it in first place.

I can see a market..

[Landak]

I've just been offered a place to read Physics at the University of Oxford, and I have to ask this - as a future academic, what about letting students use the machine to print their own 'books'? I'd put a fair bit more effort into making my lecture notes - across all modules - more understandable if I knew that one day I'd have a whole series of paperbacks sitting on my desk with my name on them, even if they were all in a production run of '1'! It would be lovely to present an arts student with a book filled with *their* essays at the end of their degree - and this machine makes it practical. I'm sure that (somehow...) it'd be quite happy with pdf's - something most people would be able to produce with a little bit of help - and the end result would be a bit cheaper than printing it all out yourself, and getting it bound somewhere...

Barcelona Metro has book vending machines

[supertsaar]

The Barcelona Metro has book vending machines that sell you spanish translations of well known classic literature hits (thrillers, novels and I think I even spotted some poetry).
They use a typical candy-bar vending machine (of the rotating-spiral persuasion, not a roto-plooker unfortunately)
Price was about 7 Euros a pop if I remember right...

so...

[sirgoran]

Does this mean I can go and have printed and bound, a book of vintage porn?

Just wondering...

-Goran

That was Brewster

[lamona]

You're probably thinking about Brewster Kahle and his bookmobile. He drove around Africa demonstrating how he could download public domain books via satellite and print them out in the back of his van. He also does this in the U.S.

Clueless CNN

[InklingBooks]

This CNN reporter, like many of her colleagues, is utterlessly clueless, knowing about as much about this topic as a reporter who'd breathelessly report, circa 1925, that Oldsmobile had a revolutionary new factory that would turn out a new invention called the automobile, powered by gasoline, which would replace the horse and buggy. Notice the use of "legendary" to describe a flesh-and-blood person, Jason Epstein. That's a good indication of a fluff-headed, hysteria-inclined journalist. King Arthur is legendary. Epstein isn't.

This technology has been around and in wide use for years. Print on Demand has trade journals and is a routine part of publishing today. Tens of thousands of the books you find on Amazon are POD books. Some publishing companies, including my own, are built around a POD model. One printing company, Lightning Source, where I do business, recently upped its POD production capacity from one to three million books a month. Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge University presses all release some scholarly works POD and have for years.

True, there hasn't been much effort to put the machinery into bookstores or libraries, but that's merely a matter of economics and quality. Will there be enough demand to cover the cost of this $50,000 machine and its maintenance? Will the books be reasonably priced and not poor quality? Think of all the troubles you have had with copy machines in libraries. This machine is far more complex, so how likely is it to be well maintained? POD books can look quite good, as good in quality as most traditionally published books. But that's because they're printed in factories with experienced staff overseeing far larger and more expensive machinery. An economy of scale keeps the quality high and the cost low.

Don't be so quick to believe what you hear from news outlets such as CNN.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

Re:Clueless CNN

[Woldry]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of libraries get grants to cover at least part of the $50k and buy up machines. Or if they pool their resources and buy a machine per county, or a machine per state, or some such model. Most public libraries are all about collaborative projects.

Library circ

[lamona]

In a large library, only a small percentage of books get checked out at all within a year, and many never get checked out over a period of decades.

That's true for academic libraries, but some public libraries have incredible circulation rates -- 4-6 times their total collection per year. Some of the books don't circulate at all, and some rarely spend time on the shelf.

That said, the books circulating the most are not generally the public domain books. They are the current bestsellers, which this POD service probably will not be allowed to print. Even if they were to kick back the royalties, the middlemen (warehousers, jobbers, retailers) are too powerful to let the business pass them by.

Re:Library circ

[banerjek]

That's true for academic libraries, but some public libraries have incredible circulation rates -- 4-6 times [ca.gov] their total collection per year. Some of the books don't circulate at all, and some rarely spend time on the shelf. Point taken, but that's largely because public libraries effectively "specialize" in pop literature. It is possible that people who just want something to read and dump/recycle could be enticed with PoD for the right price.

I can't seriously believe this will work unless at least some bestsellers are available in addition to works in the public domain. Then again, you can already buy popular literature at reasonable prices from Amazon and you don't have to go to the library to pick it up. If you to read something for free, you have to wait for it to be available at the library (or in some cases pay a very low "rental" fee)

Given that librarians have enough trouble with ordinary printers, copiers, etc when trying to print patron materials, forms, labels, etc, I wonder how reliable these will work out to be.

Re:Library circ

[lamona]

I can tell you that librarians hate the photocopiers and printers that are out in the public area -- they always need paper added or to be unjammed. I assume that these machines would not be "self serve." It makes more sense to me to put them in copy stores, like Kinko's, where it's peoples' job to make machines run smoothly and collect money for copies. Libraries aren't good at either. My second choice would be bookstores. Libraries are good at lending, lousy at selling. It just doesn't seem to be the right model.

Re:Library circ

[banerjek]

It makes more sense to me to put them in copy stores, like Kinko's, where it's peoples' job to make machines run smoothly and collect money for copies. Libraries aren't good at either. My second choice would be bookstores. I seem to remember that 6 or 7 years ago, Barnes and Noble announced that they would be selling PoD books from their brick and mortar stores. I think the idea was to reduce distribution costs and make more titles available. I wonder what happened with that.

Re:Library circ

[Woldry]

Speaking as a librarian, I have to agree with you that there would be all sorts of physical problems we'd be dealing with, and that the learning curve for getting our patrons up to snuff with using one of these beasties would be steep. (Ever watched one of us trying to patiently explain to a patron, "No, sir, the mouse doesn't work like a remote. It only works when it's on the desktop. That's right. Right. Now slide it around and watch the arrow move on the screen. The screen? Oh. That's the TV-ish part of the computer. Right, that. Okay, now if you move the mouse -- oh, remember to keep the mouse on top of the desk. Flat down on it. There's no need to pick it up. There you go"... ad insanitatem?)

However -- also speaking as a librarian -- I am thrilled at the prospect that my library may one day have one of these machines. No more embarrassment at not having the particular Shakespeare play the patron wants, no more being caught with our only copy of the Kalevala out right when a teacher assigns it to her entire class without checking first to see if the library has 30 copies for them, no more having to wait weeks to interlibrary loan some semi-obscure book by a classic author that the patron thinks EVERY library should have. "Oh, you need a copy of Sylvie and Bruno? Here, just have a seat over there and I'll have a copy for you in just a few minutes."

So....

[JFMulder]

... how many libraries of congress can this puppy print per hour?

Why can't we have it in BOTH digital and paper

[ubuwalker31]

I don't know about you, but I like reading paper books and e-books. It depends on the topic, my location, and how I feel.

Waiting 10 minutes at the library for a 'paper book', rather than hunting for hours online or spending my own money would be nice.

But, hasn't anyone thought through the practical aspects of this technology? With limited space at a library, where do you keep all of the books you've printed once they are read and returned? Or do you get to keep the book at taxpayer expense? And if you keep it, should the library have to print it out again at taxpayer expense when the next patron wants the same book? And does the library have room to store this huge machine? And why spend $50,000 on this machine when you can get these books in electronic format in the first place?

IMHO, I have little faith in this technology, or this company. Check out their website: http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ -- its sorta pathetic. And the videos of the product in action...are in .mov format!!!! WTF? This makes me question their whole business decision making process and openness to the copyleft movement.

Real World Analysis, Schools Buy Books

[LifesABeach]

I did RTFA,(forgot my med's, again). But lets consider a typical school purchase of a Sociology Book, for 1300 middle school children. The approximate cost to order, handle, store, and distribute was $115,000. This book copier looks like a good purchase, except for the Binding part. The pretty picture, on a casual glance, shows hard bound books. I think, realistically, that the binding is of a thicker paper type; That means the book can only be used once per child, then on to the recycle bin. Does the machine require special paper? What are the cost of service, getting the book titles, replacement ink, and paper? If these questions have been answered, then what are they? I this type of machine would be worth while learning more about.

One of the last remnants of humanity

[NineNine]

Books are one of the last remnants of real humanity, in our temporary, disposable, generic, fast-food culture. No matter how much of the rest our lives becomes generic, sterile, and commoditized, I think that people will *never* give up their real books. I know that I never will. This machine isn't nearly as good as my local used book store where I can go through the books, and pick up fantastic books for a few quarters.

Re:One of the last remnants of humanity

[Tablizer]

I think that people will *never* give up their real books. I know that I never will.

It *makes* books. They are just made on-demand instead of mass produced.

Books are one of the last remnants of real humanity, in our temporary, disposable, generic, fast-food culture.

Are you still waiting for "Slashdot: The Book"? See ya in the Flamebait chapter :-)

Missing the Boat- publishing going e-pub instead

[docinthemachine]

The real trend is e-pub. Read here about fivtion and hw even medical publishing is going e-pub. This is so retro-paper http://docinthemachine.com/2006/12/05/is-paper-med ical-publishing-dead/

Re:The hidden benefit

[symbolic]

The books will be printed on paper that will turn dark after one year, rendering the printed material unusable. Rumor has it that this copy protection scheme can be defeated by drawing a line around the perimeter of each page using a black sharpie, but this has yet to be confirmed.

The barrier to L-space is Sonny Bono

[tepples]

Now if only it could tap into L-Space.

Project Gutenberg is supposed to be L-space, but the US Congress keeps f***ing it up.

DIY

[finalbroadcast]

Worse yet I can imagine one of these in every coffee house in america with the clerk's poetry books coming in at 200 GB of space.

0.05 cents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, do you work for Verizon?

Gutenberg Bible

[SilverJets]

Anyone know what the first, full length book printed by one of these machines was? It would be kind of cool if the developers reproduced a copy of the Gutenberg Bible as their first book on the first completed machine.

One bookstore per million Americans?

[ArsSineArtificio]

(1) American cities seem to have only up to one such "book-store" per one million inhabitants

This statistic is, of course, made up, but it is mystifying that anybody would think this was even vaguely true. Extrapolating broadly, the United States would have about three hundred bookstores; Barnes & Noble alone operates 801 bookstores in the United States.

I experimented with Google Maps, choosing three cities to which I have never been and with which I am not familiar, viewing them from a scale of ten miles, and using "Find Businesses" to look for retailers of books.

Denver, Colorado (metropolitan inhabitants: 2.3M): You predict 2.3 bookstores; Google business search gives 25,815 results for "book". Assuming generously that half of these results are false, there seems to be one bookstore per 178 inhabitants.

Birmingham, Alabama (metropolitan inhabitants: 1.17M): You predict 1.17 bookstores; Google business search gives 10,173 results for "book". Assuming generously that half of these results are false, there seems to be one bookstore per 230 inhabitants.

Hartford, Connecticut (metropolitan inhabitants: 1.18M): You predict 1.18 bookstores; Google business search gives 54,344 results for "book". Assuming generously that half of these results are false, there seems to be one bookstore per 43 inhabitants.

It is possible to quibble about the definition of "bookstore", but, given that your proposition is off by several orders of magnitude, I am led to the conclusion that your silly prejudices are ill-founded.

Re:One bookstore per million Americans?

[orkysoft]

I think your statistics are even more made-up, because (1) not all stores that have "book" in their description are bookstores. Not even half. You can book (verb) many things, for example (2) one bookstore per couple hundred people would never be remotely profitable.

Of course my statistic was made up, although it has its roots in experience: when I was in a city in North America several years ago, it had about one million inhabitants, and I could find only one bookstore.

Re:One bookstore per million Americans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hartford, Connecticut (metropolitan inhabitants: 1.18M): You predict 1.18 bookstores; Google business search gives 54,344 results for "book". Assuming generously that half of these results are false, there seems to be one bookstore per 43 inhabitants.

He's a hell of a lot closer than you and where the hell are you getting those population numbers? There's less than a million people in all of Hartford county, Hartford make up less than half that. Now on to the meat of your claim. I do live in the suburbs of Hartford, and I assure you there are not 27,000 bookstores in the city. For stores that sell exclusively or primarily books, there are maybe a half dozen. For stores that include a secondary book area (like Wal-Mart or a grocery "superstore" add another half dozen). Those numbers are generous, I added a few on to what I could personally think of. Also, Hartford is about 17 square miles, are you seriously proposing there are 1,588 bookstores per square mile?

Re:One bookstore per million Americans?

[ArsSineArtificio]

Of course my statistic was made up, although it has its roots in experience: when I was in a city in North America several years ago, it had about one million inhabitants, and I could find only one bookstore.

You probably would also be disturbed to know that book purchases per capita are greater in the United States than in the Netherlands.

Re:One bookstore per million Americans?

[orkysoft]

I am already disturbed to know that TV shows like Idols and Big Brother were invented here, so I don't have any delusions of my country being made up of smarter people than any other country.

Anyway, do you have sources for this statistic, or was it just made up like 84% of all statistics?

Okay, for my first order...

[Nom du Keyboard]

On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed.'"

Okay, for my first order I'd like a copy of all the books from the Library at Alexandria please.

Re:Okay, for my first order...

[virg_mattes]

> Okay, for my first order I'd like a copy of all the books from the Library at Alexandria please.

Well, that'd be about three books total. Most of the writings in that library were on scrolls.

Virg

Re:Okay, for my first order...

[AussieVamp2]

The Time Machine will likely cost a lot more than 50K.

One word:

[__aahrlq8808]

Textbooks

Wikibooks

Wow, well said man

[Travoltus]

The free market is why DRM has made CDs cheaper.

Oh wait, CD prices are up. Nevermind.

Get back to selling babies on spikes.

[Anonymous Coward]

You lazy bugger.