Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But you wouldn't only have to wait 10 minutes. If you among the first people in the bookshop in the morning, and there were 5 people at the checkout in front of you buying only 1 book each, you'd be waiting an hour. If there were 20 books waiting to be printed ahead of yours, you'd be waiting three and a half hours. It just wouldn't work. Even if the bookshop printed 24h a day, and the printer worked perfectly, you could only print 144 books a day. That's not very many for even a moderately successful bookshop.
|
Is the assumption that the only way to buy a book in the bookstore is to have it POD? I would think that most people would buy off the shelf and only the occasional customer would want a book that had to be POD.
OTOH, if I know I want 10 books that need to be POD (or might need to be POD), I would call the bookstore (or go to its website) and "preorder" the books for pickup later in the day or the next day.
I view it as I view getting my prescription drugs at my local pharmacy: I call in my renewals and am told by the pharmacy when they will be ready for pickup. I can then pick them up any time after that at my convenience.
Of course there is another way to look at it: while waiting for the POD to finish, you could use the time to explore the shelves for other books to buy.
What I find difficult with your scenario, Harry, is that the implication is that there are no preprinted books available for sale -- every book must be POD.
If I can wait for 2-3 days for delivery from Amazon, I cannot see the difficulty in waiting even an hour at my local bookshop. I'd like to think that my hour's wait kept someone local in a job and off the public rolls.