Books, printed on demand directly in the bookshop:
Library quality paperbacks at low cost, identical to factory made books, printed direct from digital files for the reader in minutes, serving a radically decentralized world-wide multilingual marketplace. In essence, an ATM for books.

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/home.htm

... lets hope that someone gets the bright idea to sell the files as e-books as well. :rolleyes:

It's probably great for people who prefer p-books.

Books, printed on demand directly in the bookshop:


... lets hope that someone gets the bright idea to sell the files as e-books as well. :rolleyes:

It's probably great for people who prefer p-books.

It's actually not a bad idea. Keep in mind, that site sells the machines, not the books on demand.

I can imagine that a machine like that would be handy for a smaller bookstore or library that wanted to keep a much larger inventory of books on hand, but simply did not have the space to do so.

And/or a library or bookstore that served a large linguistically diverse population.

There are always people who are going to prefer or need pbooks, if only because the entry price of the ebook reader is rather steep, and I don't see it coming down anytime real soon.

You're probably right. When you (me) enjoy new technology and invest both time and money in it, you tend to have a different outlook. Technology-wise, a paper book is MUCH more accessible for most people.

I stumbled over this essay, by Eric Flint, yesterday, which makes a good case for p-books:
Paper books are not going to be joining the dodo any time soon. If ever. (http://baens-universe.com/articles/Paper_books_are_not_going_to_be_joining_the_dodo_a )

While the original thought was to have the machines in stores that could print them while people waited (as if the lines were not long enough already), the reality turned out to be that they were used by small publishers to print books when an order came in. This allowed them to cut inventory and also offer books that have a low total demand. If the minimum print run is 5,000, how willing will some publishers be to offering a book that may sell 500 copies a year?