Need A Book????

I just saw this on CNN....They have a machine its called a Book Espresso it will print and bind the book you want...It comes out cover and all like the book you'd find in the store...It will even print out of print books...Or it will print YOUR book....

There are 22 of these machines world wide but soon expected to be more.And more complex too i would assume....

The machine is fairly small and compact.It does not yet have every title but will soon.

Pretty amazing i though....A compact book machine....

ErikJonas said:

I just saw this on CNN....They have a machine its called a Book Espresso it will print and bind the book you want...It comes out cover and all like the book you'd find in the store...It will even print out of print books...Or it will print YOUR book....

There are 22 of these machines world wide but soon expected to be more.And more complex too i would assume....

The machine is fairly small and compact.It does not yet have every title but will soon.

Pretty amazing i though....A compact book machine....

Click to expand...

Erik,

This is an efficient idea; point of service books. Trees are renewable. The carbon foot print is mostly removed by removing useless trucking of books and mailing single packages. These machines are already in the basements of some Universities to print out even rare books on demand for about $15 a go.

The pages are glued and not stitched but that seems to work well for Rocky Nook and Oreilly soft covers. At least, that's what I think they are as I cannot see evidence of stitching. One cant open the pages completely at the spine, so it's not like my wife's Ada Boni Italian Regional Cooking book, with that will last for ever. That book lays flay and is a special pleasure to use again and again. Doubtless, a glue bound book would shed pages. Solution the the glue back book is to remember what one has reads or not cook the same linguini twice!

Asher

PoD

The company where I was a pubs manager used PoD (Print on Demand) for our software manuals for several years. It gave the customer a way to get a printed copy of our 300+ page manual without the company having to incur the steep pre-press and inventory costs of a press-printed book.

The quality of the binding was, very good and very durable, but lacked the "lay-flat" feature some press printers offer for perfect bound volumes.

Since the reproduction is essential laser xerography, I imagine that color reproduction isn't stunning, but would be adequate for business graphics.

PoD has not revolutionized the publishing industry the way some pundits predicted 15-20 years ago when it was first introduced. Mostly because it transfers the setup costs from the publisher to the customer. A press-printed version of our manual was ~$4.00 each, a PoD version was ~$44.00 each. PoD is not particularly economical when large quantities are required because there is no economy of scale.

The current generation of direct-digital printing presses offer much better reproduction and much more flexibility of paper and page size, and can enable an author to get a "self published" book on the shelves with a much lower investment than traditional methods. However, many low-end publishers don't provide professional-level color management and quality control.

It mostly boils down to the old adage "Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick 2" PoD is fast, but is often not good, and is seldom cheap.