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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.'"
...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.
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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.
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*
Carbon Monoxide poisoning during severe winter weather actually happens from people burning things(like books, coal etc.) to keep warm. It happens.
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.
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.
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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.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
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.
May we live long and die out
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...
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
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.