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Blackwell Launches Print-On-Demand Trial In the UK
krou writes "In Dec. 2006, we discussed the Espresso Book Machine. Well, on April 27 the bookseller Blackwell will launch a three-month trial of the machine in its Charing Cross Road branch in London as a 'print on demand' service for shoppers in an effort 'to consign to history the idea that you can walk into a bookshop and not find the book you want.' When the trial begins, it will be able to print any of some 400,000 titles; Blackwell's overall goal is to extend this to a million titles by the summer, and to spread out more machines to the rest of its sixty stores once it works out pricing. Currently, they charge shelf price for in-print books, and 10 pence per page for those out of print (about $55 for a 300-page book), but are analyzing customer behavior to get a better pricing model. Says Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings: 'This could change bookselling fundamentally. It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon ... I like to think of it as the revitalization of the local bookshop industry.' Their website notes that in addition to getting books printed in-store, in future you will be able to order titles via their site. (They also mention that one of the titles you can print is the 1915 Oxford Poetry Book, which includes one of Tolkien's first poems, 'Goblin's Feet.')" You'll also be able to bring in your own book to print — two PDF files, one for the book block and one for the cover.
How long before publishers demand a ever increasing amount of fees for this service? They already have problems with the idea of digital distribution.
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I've always had trouble getting decent(ly priced) copies of old philosophy books and this would help me a great deal. I just wish they were testing this in the US...
At least as far as independent publishing of books goes, there is something sort of similar. I found that out when I was trying to find a place to print my thesis. This service called Lulu www.lulu.com which would print your PDF file as a book and also put it up for sale on Amazon (ISBN and all). Now, when I get the corrections from my examiners I do plan to put my thesis at Amazon (just to see how many people would pay to get a hard copy of my research), even if I make the PDF freely available on my website.
www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
Is fifteen cents per page a normal on-demand charge? Books with nothing special about them will cost a few dollars to print conventionally. Blackwell's costs are higher I'm sure and they have the retail share as well. But still, $55 for a book that might otherwise retail for $10-15?
That's a crazy price. My uni's print shop will do it for less than that, hardback, and they have an actual human gluing it together. I know because I've done it with an out of print text book that the author was kind enough to provide me with a pdf of.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
> 10 pence per page for those out of print
I'm not sure "out of print" is the right terminology here.
In my experience the print-on-demand books are very low quality. It hurts me when I pay over US$100 for a book and get a print-on-demand (Springer.... I'm looking at you). If only they were upfront about it.
We've had the technology for in-store print on demand for at least a decade. Darn near every bookstore should be able to print you a copy of darn near every book in its catalog in a few minutes. The fact that this is not already common (at $10 or less per 300 pages) is due to stupid business decisions all through the publishing chain, not to lack of technology.
And at least 20 years ago a woman I knew who had a fairly large (and quite nice) butt wondered why we didn't have semi-automated make-to-order clothing stores in every mall, where someone like her would look at a style sample, say, "I'll take that style in fabric #402," and have them either measure her on the spot or used her measurements they already had on file, and make her exactly what she wanted, in a size that fit *her* body instead of an arbitrary measurement.
This was all technically feasible, including the beeper you'd carry around the mall while you did your other shopping, that would alert you when your new slacks were ready at the "Pants That Fit" store.
If nothing else, make or print to order gets rid of the remainder problem that plagues both book publishers and clothing manufacturers.
Quality of the print job. Quality of the binding. Removal of the hassle of the do-it-yourself job. Setup costs. Cost of the paper (cheaper in the oh-my-god number of reams than in single reams). Cost of the toner. Cost of the glue.
There's a few reasons for you, off the top of my head.
Print on demand has come a very long way; I would dearly love to have the ability to walk into a bookstore and say, "I want the title X by author Y", and walk out five minutes later with it in hand. No more out of print titles, or "publisher out of stock" (same thing, different name.)
Our first attempt to print a book was not entirely successful.
The Times's choice - from a rather limited list, the full catalogue not being available until next week - was a 1919 volume called Heroes of Aviation, a book of stirring tales of such First World War flying aces as Albert Ball and someone called Georges Guynemer The Miraculous, which was unavailable for more than half a century until it was revived by an online publisher.
Thor Sigvaldason, co-founder of On Demand Books, the people behind the machine, clicked a mouse and it started making whirry, photocopier-like noises.
Laser-printed pages started flying out from the first half of the machine into the second, where the book is made.
It was clamped, glued, stuck to the cover, cut to size and spewed out of a letterbox-sized slot in the side of the machine - where it promptly fell apart.
"Things do happen," said Mr Sigvaldason, phlegmatically. "It is actually perfectly bound. It just doesn't have a cover."
Another attempt and, after 13 minutes - rather slow, but then there was a pause to empty the wastepaper box - a perfect, warm and rather industrial-smelling copy of Heroes of Aviation was in my hands, mint-fresh and looking just like a real book.
Which it was.
From the description of the process above - my (educated) guess is that the only real problem might be with the binding of the covers.
Mainly related to the number of pages. Below the certain number of pages there is probably not enough surface for glue to catch on that fast.
Even if it is a very fast binding glue, and there is enough surface to bind to - if the machine is meant to operate akin to a photocopier (quick and dirty) things like loose covers are bound to happen.
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Or simply viewing it online.
Sorry, it's more like a desperate attempt to cling to the old sales model. You have to switch gears to accommodate the future - electronic books. That means no paper printing at all. Anyone who plans to build a long-lasting business by clinging to the past in the face of a technological revolution will have an uphill battle ahead of them.
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While I'd consider this great for text books and manuals, is anybody ever that desperate to get a fiction book that may take weeks, that they can't wait a day? Almost every interdependent bookshop I know will take a day to get any book I can think of in a day (two if i turn up after their last phone call to HQ), at no extra charge (hell I've even messed up and ordered a book that it turned out I didn't buy and still didn't have to pay a thing), £23.40 is a bit much for foundation (RRP £6.99) and £41 for dune is defiantly excessive.
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$55 is too much for ANY book. Unless its for a rare collectors copy or some such.
http://www.ladyaleta.com/aleta/tolkien.htm
Much faster than waiting for the book to print.
Wonderful! I can hardly wait until the DVD stores grab this idea! Here in Thailand, legal CD/DVD stores have a hundred titles, and pirate shops have thousands! You can never find what you want in the legal shops.
You also got the costs of storing all those bolts of cloth that need to either fed into the machine by a human being or have a HUGE system for all the various types and colors.
Sorry, but paperback style books that use 2 types of paper and 1 type of glue are feasable. Cloths that use all kinds of different materials are not, unless you want to be the one to tell the average woman she is going to wear the exact same materials as everyone else. Just check, how many people even have the same buttons on their jeans?
Anyway, it is far simpler, if you want a custom made piece, you go to a tailor. They still exist and they don't even cost that much (when you consider quality).
The clothing industry is just to different, to many styles, to many variations. Consider this, count the number of clothing stores vs the number of bookstores (which helps explain election results).
This printing on demand business won't be making chewable books, or pop-up books, or braille books, or picture books, or round books, or maps or hand-bound books. It spits out paperbacks.
A machine that could make jeans, 2-3 choices of cloth, different cuts and different sizes is "easy". A machine that can do all fashion would consume much of a supermarket just for its cloth feeder.
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