Online videos of POD printer in operation
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ "On Demand Books LLC. is planning to become the first company to globally deploy a low cost, totally automatic book machine, which can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention." As far as I can tell, the company is claiming that the difference between their POD printer and existing ones is that (1) it's cheaper, and (2) it doesn't require skilled operators. The company is headed by Jason Epstein, whose Anchor Books started the U.S. paperback revolution in the 1950s. The site links to some interesting articles by him (he also wrote a book on this topic, which I read a few months ago), and to two videos. The first video, which is fairly short, demonstrates how the printer works. The second one is much longer, so I've summarized its contents below. Epstein says in one of his articles, "In the electronic future, everything ever published will be recoverable by searching on Google or sites like it. Enthusiasts for any activity under the sun, booksellers, publishers, and eventually authors themselves will post digital files of texts on their sites. At their computers, readers will select books from an infinite library of many languages and transmit them to the nearest book machines, where they will collect the printed books at their convenience." Well, there's such a thing as delivery by mail. :) He goes on to say: "A post-Gutenberg system could be assembled now from existing technologies. But while the technologies exist, the commercial infrastructure to support them does not. Music publishers sell directly over the Internet to consumers who play tunes on devices like the iPod. But before book publishers can sell titles directly to readers, they will need to build thousands of book machines." Here's the summary of the longer video, which shows the launch of the beta version of the printer at a World Bank gathering. A Kenyan representative of the World Bank tells how, when she returns home to her village with a copy of Newsweek or a local newspaper, the publication is passed around to each villager because it's the first printed material they've seen for months. Her dream is to be able to take a machine like this back to Kenya so that books can be produced there. A World Bank representative talks about how expensive and time-consuming the non-POD method of producing books is for his organization. Jason Epstein talks about the decline of the back-list in the 1980s. He says that it was due to people moving from the city to the suburbs, so that most booksales came from bookstores at malls, which had higher costs and therefore had to stock books that could be sold faster. Publishers, instead of being able to rely on their back-lists, had to come up with many more new books each year than in the past. Publishers weren't able to keep up with the demand, so they were swallowed by conglomerates. In the mid-1980s, he started a giant "telephone directory of books," The Reader's Catalog. People could phone up an 800 number and buy any book in the catalog. But it cost his company too much to be able to put together orders that way. Similarly, he says, Amazon and Barnes&Noble have struggled to keep their Internet bookstores alive. He then totally leaps over the history of POD printers and acts as though the next stage in the development of bookselling was this machine. "It will bring the world's languages and its culture to anyone with access to electricity and broadband," he said. The Kenyan representative, obviously excited by this speech, talks about the possibilities for bringing back into print older books that "the elders talk about," but which are no longer available in bookstores. A representative from Epstein's company demonstrates the "Espresso" printer: A signal to print the digital file is sent from a computer that can be located anywhere. The pages are printed on both sides. At the same time, the cover is prepared. Once the pages are ready, they're "agitated" to get them to all line up with each other. The spine of the paper is scored so that glue will set in properly. Glue is applied. The paper is delivered on top of the cover, "and the cover is then clamped and bound" onto the pages. Then the book is rotated so that each edge can be trimmed. Books of different sizes and thickness can be printed one after the other. The operator of the machine doesn't need to do anything except to pick up the finished books and add paper and ink occasionally. The guy demonstrating this gives some assisting students copies of manga. Yay! The girls look interested. The boy looks totally bored. :) It takes ten minutes to print a book, but two books can be produced at once, cutting the time per book to five minutes. Reporter: "Will this eventually be able to make a cup of coffee?" Representative: "Absolutely!"
http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ "On Demand Books LLC. is planning to become the first company to globally deploy a low cost, totally automatic book machine, which can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention." As far as I can tell, the company is claiming that the difference between their POD printer and existing ones is that (1) it's cheaper, and (2) it doesn't require skilled operators. The company is headed by Jason Epstein, whose Anchor Books started the U.S. paperback revolution in the 1950s. The site links to some interesting articles by him (he also wrote a book on this topic, which I read a few months ago), and to two videos. The first video, which is fairly short, demonstrates how the printer works. The second one is much longer, so I've summarized its contents below. Epstein says in one of his articles, "In the electronic future, everything ever published will be recoverable by searching on Google or sites like it. Enthusiasts for any activity under the sun, booksellers, publishers, and eventually authors themselves will post digital files of texts on their sites. At their computers, readers will select books from an infinite library of many languages and transmit them to the nearest book machines, where they will collect the printed books at their convenience." Well, there's such a thing as delivery by mail. :) He goes on to say: "A post-Gutenberg system could be assembled now from existing technologies. But while the technologies exist, the commercial infrastructure to support them does not. Music publishers sell directly over the Internet to consumers who play tunes on devices like the iPod. But before book publishers can sell titles directly to readers, they will need to build thousands of book machines." Here's the summary of the longer video, which shows the launch of the beta version of the printer at a World Bank gathering. A Kenyan representative of the World Bank tells how, when she returns home to her village with a copy of Newsweek or a local newspaper, the publication is passed around to each villager because it's the first printed material they've seen for months. Her dream is to be able to take a machine like this back to Kenya so that books can be produced there. A World Bank representative talks about how expensive and time-consuming the non-POD method of producing books is for his organization. Jason Epstein talks about the decline of the back-list in the 1980s. He says that it was due to people moving from the city to the suburbs, so that most booksales came from bookstores at malls, which had higher costs and therefore had to stock books that could be sold faster. Publishers, instead of being able to rely on their back-lists, had to come up with many more new books each year than in the past. Publishers weren't able to keep up with the demand, so they were swallowed by conglomerates. In the mid-1980s, he started a giant "telephone directory of books," The Reader's Catalog. People could phone up an 800 number and buy any book in the catalog. But it cost his company too much to be able to put together orders that way. Similarly, he says, Amazon and Barnes&Noble have struggled to keep their Internet bookstores alive. He then totally leaps over the history of POD printers and acts as though the next stage in the development of bookselling was this machine. "It will bring the world's languages and its culture to anyone with access to electricity and broadband," he said. The Kenyan representative, obviously excited by this speech, talks about the possibilities for bringing back into print older books that "the elders talk about," but which are no longer available in bookstores. A representative from Epstein's company demonstrates the "Espresso" printer: A signal to print the digital file is sent from a computer that can be located anywhere. The pages are printed on both sides. At the same time, the cover is prepared. Once the pages are ready, they're "agitated" to get them to all line up with each other. The spine of the paper is scored so that glue will set in properly. Glue is applied. The paper is delivered on top of the cover, "and the cover is then clamped and bound" onto the pages. Then the book is rotated so that each edge can be trimmed. Books of different sizes and thickness can be printed one after the other. The operator of the machine doesn't need to do anything except to pick up the finished books and add paper and ink occasionally. The guy demonstrating this gives some assisting students copies of manga. Yay! The girls look interested. The boy looks totally bored. :) It takes ten minutes to print a book, but two books can be produced at once, cutting the time per book to five minutes. Reporter: "Will this eventually be able to make a cup of coffee?" Representative: "Absolutely!"