09.17.09
"Google Lets You Custom-Print Millions of Public-Domain Books"
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/google-books-publish-on-demand/
Google has found a way to let people print legitimate, customized copies of books that are in public-domain. Seven years ago, Google began scanning endless books from the nation's leading university libraries and have been converting them into documents available, through Google, to be searched and read. Recently, Google partnered with On Demand Books -- a company that is best known for its Espresso Book Machine, which is, according to their official website, "a fully integrated patented book making machine which can automatically print, bind and trim on demand at point of sale perfect bound library quality paperback books with 4-color cover indistinguishable from their factory made versions." It can also print, bind and cut to size with a color cover a 300-page book in about four minutes. To buy and print any public-domain book of your choice, they're predicting, will cost approximately eight dollars. Dane Neller, On Demand Books CEO, claims this partnership "flips book distribution on its head" and calling it a "revolution" now that “content retrieval is now centralized and production is decentralized.” You may have not noticed an Espresso Book Machine in your city quite yet, because currently only 30 of them are offered sparsely in Ann Arbor, London, Egypt, Canada, and Melbourne. But the company hopes to sell 60 more printers in the next year, so keep your eyes peeled.
When I began to read this article to be advertising a new revolution in the world of books, I was not surprised to see Google's name all over it. However, I was shocked to read that they are actually (somewhat) encouraging books to be read on paper. From what I can gather, I think this is a great idea. The idea of being able to personally customize the look of your novel and print it in professional quality hot off the press is pretty cool. I knew personally I've tried to find hardcovers of a few of my favorite books only to find that you can pretty much only find them on Amazon or eBay for an obscene amount of money, because they are now out-of-print and/or a collectible. Also, there are a lot of readers who are skeptical, on-the-fence, or just not interested in the current craze of digital book readers, like Amazon's Kindle, and if they knew that they can purchase a book electronically with the option of reading it on a Kindle or print a fresh copy (hard or soft) "indistinguishable from their factory made versions" all for about eight bucks. The only thing that unnerves me is that Google is already pretty much leading the game for the online consumption of digital books, and now they plan on having a monopoly* with turning those purchased eBooks into actual hard-copies. Hmm.
*(with On Demand Books, so technically not a monopoly)
No comments:
Post a Comment