I admit this looks like great technology. This particular POD system could revolutionize / decimate the bookstore industry, depending on how it gets implemented.
I wonder if publishers will be savvy enough to utilize the technology for sales of out-of-print or hard-to-get books.
No one needs to PoD the latest Dan Brown book, so machines focused on stuff like that will fail, but make available long out-of-print books like many of ERB's works, or some of Fitzgerald's lesser known stuff, and they could actually stimulate business.
I saw a company video for the original version of the machine the other day and the costs to the book vendor is 1 cent per page, which should give a rough idea of how much the end product would cost the customer. I was happy to see one US book retailer announce that they were going to offer the service to international customers.
There are already some POD publishers out there. I am sure they make up part of their higher production costs (if there are any) with the fact that much that is out of print is public domain.
I admit this looks like great technology. This particular POD system could revolutionize / decimate the bookstore industry, depending on how it gets implemented.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if publishers will be savvy enough to utilize the technology for sales of out-of-print or hard-to-get books.
ReplyDeleteNo one needs to PoD the latest Dan Brown book, so machines focused on stuff like that will fail, but make available long out-of-print books like many of ERB's works, or some of Fitzgerald's lesser known stuff, and they could actually stimulate business.
If only I had an extra $70,000...
ReplyDelete*sigh*
It interfaces with archive.org in order to print public domain books. That's pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the unit price of a book is, assuming some plausible load and a given ROI etc.
I saw a company video for the original version of the machine the other day and the costs to the book vendor is 1 cent per page, which should give a rough idea of how much the end product would cost the customer. I was happy to see one US book retailer announce that they were going to offer the service to international customers.
ReplyDeleteThere are already some POD publishers out there. I am sure they make up part of their higher production costs (if there are any) with the fact that much that is out of print is public domain.
ReplyDelete