Blackwell Launches Print-On-Demand Trial In the UK 116
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.
Re:Royalties (Score:2, Informative)
Sorry, formated so it doesn't suck.
Greed.
They'll still want their take.
Granted not all authors are like that but you tend to lean that way after a while.
Mr. Flint seems to have the right idea.
"Baen Books is now making available -- for free -- a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online -- no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. ) Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons. The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it. There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences! Alles in ordnung! I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:"
ect ect
http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm [baen.com]
Similar thing for independents (Score:4, Informative)
$55? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Similar thing for independents (Score:4, Informative)
Lulu does a reasonable job, and it's pretty cheap too, unlike most vanity printing you can order as few or as many as you like. I've seen someones book full of old photo's and text while the photo quality wasn't perfect. It's nice to see you can get a minimum order of 1 at a competitive price.
Re:Cost (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what this company is using, but my company does some print on demand for clients, mainly manuals and training material.
Re:Public domain.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cost (Score:3, Informative)
About three minutes [youtube.com]
Goblin Feet (Score:2, Informative)
Much faster than waiting for the book to print.
Re:Revitalization? More like blinders. (Score:3, Informative)
"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."
I always love this argument...particularly since not only was I there and an active participant for the first e-book revolution, but I also make a point of keeping up with how e-books are doing (that is, in fact, tracked by the Association of American Publishers).
Publishers tried to make the e-book work between 2000-2002, but there just wasn't a big enough market. And, almost ten years later, with a decade of development and the Kindle and the Sony reader out, do you know how much of the book market the e-book has taken over? Well, in January e-book sales represented 1.1% of total book sales for that month in the United States, and in February they rose to 1.5% (although, in that case, there was a decrease in book and e-book sales from January to February, and the e-book sales decreased less than the total book sales did). This is the first time I've ever seen e-book sales get to over 1% of the book market - and it took over ten years to get there. The total e-book sales for 2008 was $113 million out of total book market of $24.3 billion, or 0.5%.
Source: http://www.publishers.org/ [publishers.org]
Believe me, the printed book is not in any danger - and any publisher who abandons the printed book for e-books right now would be asking to go out of business.
Re:Royalties (Score:3, Informative)
Self publishing as an option is certainly a great thing. That doesn't mean that publishers are inherently evil, greedy bastards, or that the internet means we can dismantle the publishing apparatus post-haste.
For one thing, the reason that publishers tend to take the biggest part of the pie as far as book sales go is because they need to recoup the expenses of production, which are almost all theirs; add the costs of promotion and advertising and distribution... well, you see what I'm getting at.
Also, most editors come from the publishing side of the fence, and there's nothing quite so valuable to an author's work as a good editor.
Even with print-on-demand and internet distribution, we can't entirely eliminate the publishers; their role just changes (or potentially narrows). Their promotional duties don't change; in fact, since we're throwing the physical browsing experience away, it becomes more vital. The manuscript still needs to be made ready for publication. Ideally, we want the same quality control we had in the previous system, if not better, so they still have to be edited and proofread.
Basically, I'm just saying that altering the distribution chain doesn't automatically cut out all the other steps between manuscript and "book on my shelf."