Vending Machine For Books Coming Next Year 214
An anonymous reader writes "CNN writes about a $50,000 machine that can print books on demand. It can print up to 550 pages and put a binding on the book in seven minutes. It will be debuting in a select number of U.S. libraries in 2007. The machine is the 'output' end of a service called On Demand Books, which is also just debuting. From the article: 'Some 2.5 million books are now available - about one million in English and no longer under copyright protection. On Demand accesses the volumes through Google and the Open Content Alliance, among other sources. [Co-founder Dane] Neller predicts that within about five years On Demand Books will be able to reproduce every volume ever printed.'"
hear that sound? (Score:4, Funny)
I' not sure if you hear that sound. It's faint, but i'm pretty sure it's lulu.com shriveling up and dying. Much like when you pour salt on a snail.
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Fixed and bracing for impact. Do with me as you like, mods. *spreads cheeks*
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Sometimes the old ways are still the best:
http://www.mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=5 [mossberg.com]
http://www.mortonsalt.com/consumer/products/foodsa lts/icecreamsalt.htm [mortonsalt.com]
KFG
Cool! (Score:2)
Wait until 2109 (Score:4, Insightful)
Based on law effective as of 2006 in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and an estimation of the expected life span of a healthy American writer, you may have to wait until 2110 for books whose author is Neal Stephenson to become available on a print-on-demand system.
Bah! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bah! (Score:5, Funny)
Duh. Now, get back to metabolizing, coppertop.
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pulp (Score:3, Funny)
Re:pulp (Score:5, Interesting)
Not necessarily.
As I don't live in the USA, I'm not a member of the party you're referring to, but I tend to vote green in our local elections - and I think this may be a good idea, even from an environmental perspective.
The reason is simple; I can be relatively sure that a book printed by this machine will be used. If someone is explicitly asking it to print a specific book, pay the cash for it (as I assume it will come with a fee), and wait seven minutes there's a high probability that there is actually a demand for the book. Compare this with dead tree books available today, that are printed in large series, where a certain percentage of the total amount printed is destined to never be opened at all - much less read.
Nothing makes my environmentalist heart weep as much as resources that are spent but never used.
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Well, at least it would be use of a sort, nice soft pages mmmm.
Re:pulp (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? This would potentially be better for the environment. Rather than a publisher printing X copies of a book, Y of which wont sell (Y may not be much smaller than X, depending on the book) a book is only printed when someone actually wants to buy it. No overstock, no waste.
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Re: How they are wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
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This famous non-coffee making coffee machine seems to have a problem - it makes coffee.
One word: (Score:4, Funny)
Textbooks
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the production cost is about a penny per page
Last quarter I had an open notes (but closed laptop) exam that covered around 500 pages of online material. After binding that was almost 30 bucks, but damn 5 bucks if I ordered through this thing, and printed in minutes? Even if you doubled the pages to make the font legible that would be a steal.
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No. A penny per page is the *production* cost--what it costs the machine's owner in raw materials and electricity to print. Also it appears to be currently limited to the sort of books you can get on Project Gutenberg (i.e., public domain).
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Google Books could indeed be a source of printable material for th
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Can this thing deal with images as well as text? Or is it limited to text?
or (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:or (Score:4, Insightful)
People that are proud to own actual copies of actual books will continue to purchase the Real Deal(TM) and not some convenience machine regurgitation. The only toe-hold on sustainability I can see for such a marketing scheme is in airports, for about seven years.
This concept just feels a bit like a photo booth at a mall or amusement park - a nice novelty but not particularly common or successful.
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They're at many malls and train/subway stations. They seem to be the standard format
for (self-supplied!) pictures for IDs.
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How often do you need to supply your own photo for something like that? The only time I recall having to do that was for my passport, and you can do that with your own camera as long as the result meets certain technical requirements. IIRC, passports are good for at least ten years. For your driv
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You know, that country one would assume you hate without having ever visited (based
upon your home page)?
Re:or (Score:5, Insightful)
* Would-be authors: For every one book that's published, there's a hundred that aren't. There is a huge glut of supply in books. This drives a lot of authors to desperation. Many turn to vanity presses, foolishly hoping to get big. They think that they have what it takes to be the next J.K. Rowling. They don't. Yes, there are problems with the publishing industry. Much of what makes a bestseller has to do with promotion. But if you can't get a big house to read you or an agent to sign you, odds are bloody good that your work is not that good.
Lower PoD cost will make their day, and hopefully push vanity presses out of business.
For those not familiar with the term, a "Vanity" press is a publisher that you pay to print and (supposedly) promote your book. The reality is that they have no incentive for you to make it big, and so just overcharge you for printing. Lulu and cafepress are a less scummy version of "self publishing": they tend to act only as printers. You'll still go nowhere, but you'll blow less of your money in doing so. This is just the next step.
* Legitimate publishers: There are some very messed up things in the way that the print world works currently, and it ends up wasting a lot of money.
1) Print run size guestimates. Publishers have to guess at how much a book is going to sell. The larger they guess, the cheaper the unit cost is, but the more likely they'll get stuck with a warehouse full of unsold books. The hope is that PoD will make producing a single book cost the same as producing a large number of books, and that they can produce them as orders come in. One big beneficiary will be small-time authors: if a publisher isn't taking as much of a risk, they can take on more clients and ones less likely to hit it big.
2) Returns. This is a really silly thing about the industry. Big book chains not only get big discounts, but they also get obscenely kind return policies. If a seller orders a bunch of books, they can return them at the publisher's expense if they don't sell. They can do this with a large chunk of their total inventory. Indie bookstores can do this too, but not as much. This blows a huge amount of money in shipping costs. Miss Snark (one of the most famous agent bloggers) once complained about a bookstore that was relocating across the street who simply returned most of their books, then reordered them at the across the street location. Most returns won't get resold, so they're just waste. Cost-effective PoD could seriously alter this situation.
The key is the phrase cost-effective. Cost-effective includes quality as well.
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Just because some doesn't get published doesn't mean that the book isn't good, it just means that the publisher doesn't think it can be profitable.
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A lot of small press companies are using print-on-demand to get their works printed, rather than contracting for traditional print services. The tabletop roleplaying game industry does this a lot, and also sells PDFs that gamers can buy and have printed and bound at Kinko's. Personally, I'd a lot rather have it printed and bound by one of those POD machines; given that the POD machine is supposed to produce a
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They are still taking a fairly good sized risk - editing and producing a book, along with promoting it still costs real money. Unlike printing costs (which can and are partially recouped by pulping and recycling returns), these costs are totally sunk.
In addition, from a bookstores POV, these machines are a *huge* risk - they are significant
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Unless they're Barty Crouch.
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The idea of getting my books from a machine doesn't appeal one jot. I like to browse shelves and poke through boxes of books just arrived in my local secondhand bookshop.
It's a pleasant way to while away an hour, to select a nice looking book, get a coffee and sit in their reading area perusing my new find.
Vending machines in u
Have this vision, I do (Score:2)
now imagine one that has 50k books, one copy of each.. you browse, and find the one you want.. buy it an walk out- they'll print another and put it on the shelf.
if you prefer to wait 7 minutes, they'll print a fresh one for you- with your name on it.
(PS I have a lotta scifi with original cover prices of 15-75 cents too.. but I'm also into this idea)
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Half the fun is browsing for me.
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IU'm suggesting, the POD store prints one of each of 50k titles, and puts them on the shelf.. you BROWSE THEM, if you find a keeper, you buy that keeper, or request a new copy for yourself if you have the time.-- advantage- now you have the ability to browse 5X the number of titles in the same space.
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I do still like my old books, but Since I am a book addict anyhow, I guess I will be trying this thing out if it appears.
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Because a good book is not a waste of paper and my 1895 printing of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland works just as well today as the day it was new.
Of course it's hardbound. My paperback copy of The Blind Watchmaker is now effectively a loseleaf edition. We are Devo. Dee Eee Vee Ooh!
KFG
Paper vs. Bits Rant (Score:2)
Plus the IT people are in control of the data, so any slip-ups on the part of "the machine", software or network are never their fault; it's always just a "system error" that never gets exp
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When was the last time you received a product manual and actually read the thing? Probably about the same time when they started being distributed exclusively in electronic form, right?
I've got a drive filled with everything from O'Reilly books in html, PDF versions of texts I purchased and didn't purchase, and a seemingly infinite amount of documentation that's too long to read on screen and too short or of too little interest to the unwashed mashes to
The manufacturer has a website (Score:5, Informative)
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Seven minutes, But I want it now! (Score:4, Interesting)
Vending machine books is not an obvious idea, but in my opinion it's not very useful either.
Sony Reader (Score:2)
Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover (Score:2, Funny)
Does this mean I can get a copy of Mein Kamft, hardbound and set in Comin Sans... with a bunny rabbit cover... in seven minutes?
Re:Mein Kamft in Comic Sans with Bunny cover (Score:5, Funny)
Why would you want a Ford owner's repair manual in a bunny rabbit cover?
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This trick never works (Score:4, Interesting)
Print-on-demand is a solution in search of a problem.
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Actually it isn't. Its a solution people refuse to invest in. Imagine if Marvel and DC Comics made available all of their old comics through PoD. No more out of print comics. Imagine if books that are now out of print, were actually made available through PoD. No more out of print books.
No, PoD is definitely a solution for a very real problem. The only thing stopping it from taking off is publishers and copyright holders.
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They wouldn't be able to charge a premium on the older stuff like they do now (as collecter's editions or whatever) if they did not restrict the quantity.
Publishing is a racket. I don't really see a demand for this, either.
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Try reading what I wrote - POD machines have debuted to much fanfare every other year or so for over a decade. Millions of dollars have been invested in them - and all of it to date lost because either the machines made crappy (physical) quality books, or it turned out that there wasn't a demand.
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With the case of PoD there is no money lost, see Lulu as a successful example (not talking about vending machine PoDs).
Re:This trick never works (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with this problem is... it's not really a problem. As I said, these (POD, not just the POD vending) machines have been introduced (multiple) times as a solution to this 'problem' - but have failed each time. This suggests to me that the problem doesn't actually exist.
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Also, don't ``mass market paperbacks'' sell for $5-$10 anyway? So why bother with these things?
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That has to be a prototype (Score:5, Informative)
Watched the video. The binder is huge, slow, and has way too many moving parts. Far too much paper handling. Looks like a prototype, too.
Worse, the price/performance is terrible. This $50,000 mechanical nightmare can only bind about 60 books per hour. Compare this IBIS automatic binder [ibis-bindery.com], which can produce 6000 books per hour; 12000 if you get some extra options.
A more fundamental question: Perfect bound books are made by doing a binding job that isn't perfect, then cutting off the edges to make the block of paper uniform. Maybe it would be easier to develop a better way of aligning the paper and using paper that's dimensionally uniform.
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The key technologies here are
a) the printers are capable of processing subsequent jobs while still producing a current job
b) all machine settings flow from a data file associated with a particular book format
c) your raw inputs are paper, ink/toner, and cover stock (and data). That's it.
How much is one of those IBIS machines? You'd need at least the SB3-4 to do the job, and in that case you have to f
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Book stores have a huge inventory and a huge number of surplus books that need to be sold at cut-rate prices. There's a lot of waste in the system. Worse than that, despite all the inventory, book stores don't always have the books you need (they have a limited property size). Even worse than that, because storing books or printing them on demand at the big IBIS places is so expensive, books go out of print if they're not popular enough and if you happen to want/need one of
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Besides, the video notes that depending on the speed of printer and so forth that is used in the Espresso, it could go as quickly as one completed b
Next invention: (Score:3, Funny)
Books printed in vending machines that will self destruct in one year and which will automatically shut down copy machines trying to duplicate it.
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Of course, this is slashdot, so the response that I can expect will be "the companies will use this as an excuse to jack up the prices - aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.
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aren't you naive!" line from people who don't believe in markets.
Unfortunately, things like this aren't subject to market forces like salads. There are multiple places I can buy a salad, which creates competition to force down prices. With a book (or music), there is only a single source for that particular book. To use the salad analogy, it would be as if only one restaurant offered salads. If you didn't like the price of the salad, you only had the option of getting a sandwich elsewhere. That's some a
Book vending machine? (Score:5, Funny)
550 Page Limit? (Score:4, Funny)
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You are right in that it couldn't do Goblet of Fire (636 pages), Order of the Phoenix (766 pages) or Half blood prince (607 pages).
And it'll be illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
errrr... every Public Domain book that's ever been printed. And scanned. And proofread....
And the "content" industries will be beavering away buying more copyright laws to lock up content till the stars turn to iron...
Cost per Page (Score:2)
But... When I was viisting South America there were lots of copy shops that printed A4 on both sides for 0.10 bolivianos * 275 page = $3.3, that's almost cheap enough. But these photocopiers were analog monster tuned and
5 cents per page or 0.05 cents per page? (Score:3, Insightful)
420 seconds???? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, for novels, first 10 pages of Chapter 1 loose or stapled, then print the whole book while I get started.
Let's see, assuming all pages are printed 2-up and cut, and assuming 2 printed pages per second, that's 4 book-pages per second of printing time. 550 pages = just under 2:18. Add time for cutting and binding and time for the glue to dry and I could see 3-4 minutes for a 550-page book. If it's a 1 page/second printer, add another 2:18.
If you can do this in full-color on glossy paper in a reasonable period of time for a reasonable price, you will be able to print international magazines anywhere, with local advertising content. Remember, people like reading actual magazines more than they like reading PDFs.
Sounds like a tool for bookstores + libraries (Score:2)
Slow on the "draw" (Score:2)
But back to the topic at hand, can't we just get the electronic copies for the love of all that is holy in the world?. Is there ANY REAL reason where we can't just go to amazon.com, order a book, receive an email with a link and download it from there? I mean, if I want to read a chapter at the commode I can print it off myself. Bu
Xerox already did it (Score:2, Informative)
550 pages (Score:2)
so... (Score:2)
Just wondering...
-Goran
Clueless CNN (Score:4, Informative)
This technology has been around and in wide use for years. Print on Demand has trade journals and is a routine part of publishing today. Tens of thousands of the books you find on Amazon are POD books. Some publishing companies, including my own, are built around a POD model. One printing company, Lightning Source, where I do business, recently upped its POD production capacity from one to three million books a month. Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge University presses all release some scholarly works POD and have for years.
True, there hasn't been much effort to put the machinery into bookstores or libraries, but that's merely a matter of economics and quality. Will there be enough demand to cover the cost of this $50,000 machine and its maintenance? Will the books be reasonably priced and not poor quality? Think of all the troubles you have had with copy machines in libraries. This machine is far more complex, so how likely is it to be well maintained? POD books can look quite good, as good in quality as most traditionally published books. But that's because they're printed in factories with experienced staff overseeing far larger and more expensive machinery. An economy of scale keeps the quality high and the cost low.
Don't be so quick to believe what you hear from news outlets such as CNN.
--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle
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Real World Analysis, Schools Buy Books (Score:2)
One of the last remnants of humanity (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, for my first order... (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, for my first order I'd like a copy of all the books from the Library at Alexandria please.
Too slow (Score:2)
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Re:Too slow (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you either:
1: Buy exclusively hardcover, thus missing a good majority of the works ever printed (not necessarily a bad thing; you might be down to only 60% crap) and paying a good 300% over the standard
2: Don't understand that your books are likely ALREADY printed using an identical process.
Either way, this thing won't fly (as it's been trying to for the last ten years now) if it doesn't meet the standard of quality.
Re:The hidden benefit (Score:3, Funny)
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I'm reminded of a classic "Scary Door" (Twilight Zone parody) scene from Futurama:
Man: Ah, I'm the only man left alive... and now, I have all the time in the world to devote to my one TRUE love, books! *takes a book off the shelf, only to have his glasses fall off and break* NO! It's not fair! It's not fair! There was finally ti-- Hey, wait a minute, my eyesight isn't THAT bad. I can still read the large print. *his eyeballs fall out* AUGH! NO!
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Re:Too slow (Score:4, Interesting)
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The barrier to L-space is Sonny Bono (Score:2)
Project Gutenberg is supposed to be L-space, but the US Congress keeps f***ing it up [wikipedia.org].