

Is this the worst idea ever? A digital book printer for the home? - wtvanhest
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/on-demand-books-bets-on-authors-who-want-to-print-their-own-paperbacks.html

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unimpressive
Title change please. The article has a much less sensational one.

And no, this idea has merit. The number of things I have wanted to print, but
not wanted to use a printer to do so, is non-zero. I would gladly pay to print
copies of public domain/CC-licensed books.

Though, this has it's own implications for Creative commons by itself. Now
that it's not outlandish for someone to print a _real_ (That is paperback
quality.) copy of your book, are we going to see a drop in the number of books
that authors distribute under copyleft licenses?

I mean, it was easy to justify it to yourself when any paper copies people
produced of your book were likely to be no better quality than a stack of
printer paper. Now that theres the potential for individuals to use something
with output closer to that of a printing press, how can authors expect anyone
to buy a publishers copy?

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wtvanhest
The reason it is the worst idea ever is 2 fold: 1) It is completely
unnecessary to waste paper and natural resources on a book that will only be
read by one person. 2) There is a perfectly good medium for reading low volume
books which is readily available.

Rather than printing a classic yourself, it makes far more sense to buy a high
quality copy. This will really be targeted at low volume books.

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pwg
> 1) It is completely unnecessary to waste paper and natural resources on a
> book that will only be read by one person.

Why do you consider that a book produced via this process would "only be read
by one person" (implying that mass printed books are more likely to be "read
by more than one person" than books produced via this process).

This book will be just as physical an entity as the mass printed book, and
have all the DRM free attributes of a mass printed paper book. It could be
loaned to another, it could be donated to a local library after having been
read, it could be donated to a book drive at a school.

The only way it would differ from a mass printed book is simply by not having
been mass printed. Otherwise I would think its chance of being read by one, or
more than one, person is identical to a mass printed book.

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wtvanhest
My 'assumption' whether good or not is:

1) Books that are not in high enough demand to be mass printed are going to
find it hard to be distributed after the first read. Niche books will
sometimes transfer between people in similar groups, but other than those rare
instances it will be hard to find a second home.

2) I'm assuming the quality will not be as good as a mass printed book and
will deteriorate more quickly.

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cleverjake
They have one of these at my local University, and it was actually really
cool. I was able to get a number of out of print books from Google Books. It
is also neat for small bookshops that can't afford to pre order dozens of
books that may or may not work out, but rather print them on demand.

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willlangford
Just the title alone shows how closed minded you are. I can see uses for this
type of machine in many situation.

What we call the internet today was build on these 'book' printing machines.
Bell Labs had several of them with people to run them to print out design
specs just for example.

If you think it's a bad idea, it really shows how little business experience
you have not only in business but in the world itself.

No matter how digital and handy things become, there is no replacement for
paper. There are just some situations that an tablet or notebook can't
replace.

~~~
wtvanhest
I regret writing the title. It is linkbaitish and does seem close minded.

There is a market for these, but it is small and personally I hope it doesn't
last long. After using a kindle I will never buy, rent or checkout another
paper book again.

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dubya
The University Bookstore in Seattle has one of these. It's kind of neat to
watch.

There's a lot of momentum for digital books now, but traditional books will be
around for a while. That may actually help this machine, as getting a
traditional publisher to print your work gets harder.

