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Google Offering Print Versions of Online Books
carluva writes "Google is teaming up with On Demand Books to offer paperback versions of its collection of over 2 million public domain books. The books will be able to be printed using ODB's Espresso Book Machine, which is already in use at several book stores and libraries and can print and bind a complete, paperback copy of a 300-page book in less than 5 minutes. Google and ODB each get $1 in royalties per book sold (Google has pledged to donate its proceeds to charities and nonprofit organizations). See also ODB's PDF press release."
I can download public domain books to my Palm.
How long before google starts a service to provide scanned copies of these new dead tree versions online and indexed?
There are LOTS of public domain books that are very hard to get a hold of in paper form. No publisher is going to reprint 200 year old books on obscure topics for which there is a market of 20 people. This makes those books accessible to those that need them, without the economies of scale that publishers rely on.
And pending the much-debated acquisition by Google of orphan books, they'll be a lot more obscure out-of-print books seeing life again.
ODB...still getting paid.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
I wonder if they will have any more resolution than the PDFs you can get from their online service. Some of the books have technical drawings that could use ahout 50 - 75 more DPI. Does anyone know if they were scanned in a higher native resolution than what they present online?
This is a wonderful thing. It may make it much easier to publish new, low circulation books as well, since you don't need to reach a critical threshold sales number to make it worth printing. Of course, a 'book' (as in the physical form) may become obsolete over the next few decades as old curmudgeons like me who like reading printed material far more than reading off a screen drop off...
Oh good, another reason to refuse to get an e-book reader.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
According to Websters the 14th century:
* Main Entry: 2image
* Function: transitive verb
* Inflected Form(s): imaged; imaging
* Date: 14th century
1 : to call up a mental picture of : imagine
2 : to describe or portray in language especially in a vivid manner
3 a : to create a representation of; also : to form an image of b : to represent symbolically
Of course, he could have also made a simple typo/brain slip.
There is already a site offering POD services for both Google Books and Internet Archive for over two years and it is done at cost:
PublicDomainReprints.org
Actually, I'd be curious as to a reference for this. While I'm sure you are right once you start talking about 1000's of books, I'm equally sure the production of 1 paperback book is not 'extremely wasteful and bad for the environment' compared to one e-book reader. The key, of course, is how many books you read on your e-book reader before it, too, becomes e-waste.
A little googling revealed this Master's Thesis on exactly this topic. I haven't read it in-depth yet, but it looks to strongly favor e-readers.
Sigh - I LIKE my printed books.
Thanks for lousy the AP article. Let's see...for a story about a great technology used to print books, I'll submit a link to a website read by those most hostile to science/technology, those who are not to keen about books that cover anything outside their narrow ideological realm. AND it's a friggin AP release. thank you so much for the effort!
Do they realize it could be used to print books about queers and such?!?!? Oh dear god nooooo... /sarcasm
yeah, mod me -1024 flamebait. Or, try this link http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/ or this one http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10355318-265.html
I'm one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. I have a nice little library of books that I keep around on two bookcases, and every now and then I'll browse over the shelves and go "Oh yea, I haven't read this one in 10 years, it deserves another go round." I also have a good sized collection of oversized art and photography books. These are particularly well suited to a permanent print format.
The thing is, if a major catastrophic event breaks down modern civilization, little to none of this electronic stuff is going to survive. There will be a big black hole, made especially worse with anything that was encrypted with DRM.
Think about things from antiquity that have survived to modern day - very well stored paper books, scrolls and things made out of clay, granite, stone and marble and very occasionally steel. That's about it.
It's not clear what Google is planning on charging...
FTA, about $8 per book (including the pair of $1 fees going to ODB and Google), although a definite price hasn't been set.
$8 seems pretty fair to me...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
It can never be an exact comparison. Think about those used textbooks you used to get in college. Those things were probably used by dozens of other students. The environmental cost of that book essentially stops immediately after it is created. The same title on eBook on the other hand has continuing cost every time it is read.
Meanwhile google's doing the smartest move: they're donating their $1 to charity. So both a: doing a good cause and b: earning themselves a tax break.
That's what I call smart capitalism.
I do think the book deal needs to have some of the issues kinked out, but overall google is taking this in a very smart way.
This is slashdot, not Digg. If someone here was to make a joke about ODB, it would more likely have something to do with ODBC being originally developed by Microsoft, yet ODB is publishing books with Google and that conundrum is leading to the end of civilization as we know it, or something.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
on demand printing started picking up.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I use IE 8 at work, the lack of built in spell check is epic fail.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Tax deductions. If they reduce the price by a $1 they receive absolutely no benefit. By taking your dollar and then donating to a charity they get a tax deduction.
....Abbie Hoffman isn't going to appreciate this, me thinks.
Your facts will not stand in the way of my wishful thinking.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
FWIW, there's no tax break to donating cash. Well, there is, but it's outweighed by the fact that you, well, no longer have the cash.
Donating money is a dumb way to make money, unless the returns you get (PR, market-building, etc) outweigh the lost dollars. That doesn't mean it's not a good idea, or a good thing to do -- it's just that the tax writeoff is never more than the amount donated, so net cash impact is never positive.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's a dumb way to make money, but google has enough of it. it is a good way to buy reputation capital as well as enforcing their company mission of making information accessible and not being evil.
really, I shoudl be able to go to a bok store and get the book I want made on the spot. At software stores, they should burn the software on demand.
For book stores, yes, good idea. But software stores are basically obsolete. Geekoid, I don't know what country you live in, but in most industrialized countries, this would already be obsolete for software. The difference between the two markets is one of tactile preference; most people prefer to read paper pages still. But with software, there's no such factor. Software is software, no matter who burns it for you. And there simply aren't enough dial-up only users left to justify a physical software store based on convenience. Widespread broadband killed places like the old mall software chains. Google for "software shops in..." and the suggestion box is filled mostly with third world cities where broadband isn't widespread yet. Software is a tough brick-and-mortar business in the US, even for places like Office Depot now. If it's cheap enough... say, under a hundred bucks or so, you just download it yourself and pay via paypal or credit card. If it's very expensive, then you're planning the purchase, and will order via mail usually. On-demand software burning would have been a great idea during the dial-up era. But now it would be like "Hey, I've got this great idea for propulsion... it's called the steam engine!".
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Agreed. Print on demand is much more efficient in regards to resource utilization. Many books printed today do not sell completely and are returned to the publisher. They then tear off the covers, rendering them un-sellable. Hopefully these books are recycled into pulp for making more books.
With POD (print on demand) publishing, you get no wastage. The downside is the higher cost to publish a POD book. However, at the $8 level, depending on the page count or usefulness of the content, that price is within the relm of the reasonable. In another post on this topic I mentioned how much more it costs to do a full color photo book using POD publishing, which is way out of line with how much it costs to do a mass produced printing press version of same.
I have a feeling that we will not see a 100% electronic book world in our future, it will be a mix of POD and electronic. Even best-sellers could be POD produced at the store for anyone who wants them. No more inventory problems, except for bulk paper and ink supplies.
either your tax system is retarded OR you really don't get how tax deductions work. If you donate you don't pay tax on your donation, you however don't get more money back than if you had never had that money at all.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
And your mass-produced paperbacks will be yellowed flakes in a 100-200 years or so.
I've got books less than 50 years old that are already yellow and brittle, despite the lack of sunlight and low humidity in my proverbial basement.
Um, my friend...if your "library" fits on two bookcases, you are not one of those people that greatly savors a paper book. :-) Come back when vistors aren't sure if they've found your house, or a used book store.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Unless things have changed in the past five years, that's not entirely accurate. What actually happened was: for mass market paperback books (the most common type), we'd strip the covers in the store, sort the covers by publishing house (to mail back once we had enough to be worth the time), then the employees would typically pick through the coverless books and take a couple for personal enjoyment, then the rest went out with the trash.
The same process was applied to magazines, except that was happening a lot more frequently (we'd get a shipment of magazines at least once or twice a week).
With hardcover and trade paper books, the unbought stock was mailed back to the publisher, or swapped between stores depending on quantity, age, and need.
At the location where I worked there was only one dumpster, and absolutely no recycling went on aside from the store employees picking through the piles and taking what they wanted before the remainder was thrown out.
Of course, if you ever special order anything then someone from corporate would decide there was a market for it and restock the store once you bought your copy; this frequently meant that after I would special order some title for myself, we would have 2 or 3 sit on the shelves for months before we had to strip-cover and discard them. Print-on-demand would have been very nice for those sorts of purchase.
Don't know why this is modded troll. Its correct. You can't make money with donations. Its all about PR in this case. Or perhaps they really just wanted to do something nice...
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!