Thursday 12 November 2009

Do you take sugar with that book, sir?

I've been watching the Ebook story with great interest and now, thanks to Mr Roy Bayfield, I've come across the following article about another revolution in the way books are delivered to the reader.

Frustrating 'out-of-print' and 'out-of-stock' books will become a thing of the past with a new machine that prints books on demand. In the future, any novel, manual, journal or academic title, no matter how old or new can be printed in just under five minutes. Blackwell launched the Espresso Book Machine® (the "EBM") this last April at its London flagship store in Charing Cross, which currently holds more than 400,000 publications. By summer there will be over a million titles available, the equivalent of 23.6 miles worth of shelving or over 50 bookshops rolled into one, in a machine the size of a photocopier. FULL STORY



The Archive says: This is definitely an exciting development, in that it means no book need ever be out of print. And although there are some downsides to this for smaller scale authors the positives do, I feel, outweigh the negatives.

3 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

There needs to be some changes in contracts then for authors, but in general I agree with you. It's a positive thing.

David Cranmer said...

Yeah, I echo your thoughts.

Unknown said...

Worth further investigation. An alternative/competitor to the Lulu system for POD books? For publishers not using templates but already preparing professionally finished PDF files for both text and one-piece covers, it does at a first glance look possible.

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