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:5, Insightful)
How is the quality? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:10 Years Behind (Score:5, Insightful)
Seamstress work is still very much a manual process. There's a reason most clothing is manufactured in Mexico, Thailand, etc. Labor is a huge cost in clothes and I don't see that going away any time soon.
Books are entirely different, as the printing process requires little to no manual labor comparatively.
Re:Public domain.. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.)
Revitalization? More like blinders. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ten pence is way too much (Score:3, Insightful)
$55 is too much for ANY book. Unless its for a rare collectors copy or some such.
Re:10 Years Behind (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time we ran costs for semi-custom women's pants, we were looking at fully-automated pattern cutting and partially-automated (guided) sewing using CAD-type tools that became common in the sailmaking business more than 20 years ago.
Yes, there's still skilled tailoring/finishing work needed, but in return for paying for that at U.S. labor rates, you never have overstock sales for sizes or patterns that didn't sell well that season. nor do you have shipping costs for finished goods, which need to be treated far more gently than bolts of cloth.
The total cost of semi-custom finished pieces came out fairly close to the total cost of a pair of women's slacks made in the Mexican maquiladora zone near Nogales, once you figured in the cost of unsold merch, which is HUGE in the clothing biz -- especially in women's clothing with its constant style changes.
Re:Cost (Score:1, Insightful)
If it's out of print, people would be willing to pay one-off pricing which is much higher than the mass-produced price.
I know I'd rather live in a world where eclectic works are only 4x as expensive as they would be in-print, vs. a world where you really can't get them at any price.
Re:From the TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's the problem with perfect binding. It doesn't handle thin books too well, and it doesn't handle thick books to well either. It's only advantage is that it's fast and cheap.
BUT (Score:3, Insightful)
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.