You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!

They had new release hardbacks for $9.99? I doubt it.

If the world moves more toward ebooks and reading on screens, this is a good way to scale back the print business. Large printing concerns may eventually become unsustainable but the demand for print won't entirely go away.

Though with a low power screen like eInk, you only have to charge once every week or two. It's a pretty negligible effort.

@grendyll: Wholeheartedly agree. The biggest problem I see with the "digital transition" in this case is battery power. You don't have to charge a book made of paper to read it...

@smirkette:
+2 for you, mi'lady.

If it is more powerful than 9 out of 10 transformers it could probably take on all the Go-Bots at once and win! SWEEEEEEET

@kaceetheconsumer: Most authors make precious little per book sold and don't need another way to be ripped off.

I don't think you need to worry - this will knock down the distribution costs to the point that you should expect to sell way more books. If I'm "on the fence" about a $30 book I'll put it back. If the same book costs $6 I'll buy it. I think most of the $30 goes to pay for transport and retail shelf space. Another advantage for the writer is that this thing probably makes books that are much less durable than your average paperback. If it falls apart after a few reads it won't get passed around as much.

Or are you worried about stores making books available without the author's permission?

This is totally brilliant. It is a great thing for readers - as much more material is going to become available. It may not make sence bottom line wise for a publisher to print a book about stained glass depictions of Owls - because the expected sales would be very low - and retailers would not waste shelf space - but if publishing and distribution suddenly cost next to nothing - the 200 people in the world who love reading about stained glass owls will be able to write, buy, and sell books on the topic! Also, I bet it can be configured to make a large print book, unlike a kindle or sony reader if you leave the book on a plane etc who cares, and you don't need to charge up or to know howw to use "scary" technology! I see a day when you can write your stained glass owl book, post it on the net, have it instantly translated into every language spoken on earth, be subject to a review system like on amazon, and get a royalty check for $28 when the 200 people on earth who are interested actually buy it!! (not bad for 6 months work) This is better than the kindle. My grandmother wouldn't even look at somthing like the kindle - if it is more modern that a touch tone phone she is intimidated. My mom would think kindle is cool, possibly even buy it, but it would probably never get used. I would only buy somthing like a Kindle if I knew that I could get basically whatever content I want on it - I don't want to read Oliver Twist - I want to read about stained glass owls!

question: what about pictures, cover art, etc?

On The Media (on NPR) had a great segment about this in early 2008, which they replayed in November.

Transcript & audio here:
[www.onthemedia.org]

According to that, they're using ultrasonic binding instead of glue. I'm not sure what the video in the Boston Globe says, but maybe there are different versions of the machine.

There are a lot of worthwhile books that are out of print, and it would not be financially feasible to reprint 1,000 books for only a small number of potential buyers. This machine is ideal for that situation.

Since they've taken most of the labor out of it (not touched by union-workers' hands) this machine probably has more profit per book built into the price.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Exactly. The PhDs I worked for were brilliant at bioengineering, but heaven help them if the fax machine jammed.

A) It's not been seen in the wild much, and
B) This is the first one in the wild in New England, that I've heard of. (Yes, I live here.)

Those are certainly newsworthy points, and the article itself will probably encourage more people to trek over there to check it out.

@catastrophegirl - Just seems that if Kinkos charges say 15 cents a page for a copy process that is much simpler, with fewer maintenance issues and is much faster (and keeps a profit of say 10%), then the base per page cost of this thing without profit would must be around 15 cents per page (in theory). That's $30 base cost for a 200 page soft cover book. I can't see how something that can do about 10 books an hour could be profitable.

But I do see the attraction

I think I need to take a nerd road trip up to see this giant machine.

The point is that every book published could be stored and then reprinted on demand for cost plus a small fee-- pretty exciting.

I'm sure you miss out on color photo inserts, etc. so some books would not be worth downloading this way- but pure text items/fiction, this would be absolutely great.

I worked for an office that produced large reports. They had two copy machines that looked similar to this (or even bigger). I don't know what they're called or how they work, but the produce the pages about as fast as you can count (at a normal-fast speed). It only takes a few minutes to produce hundreds of pages, but they're LOUD! A bookstore would need to put them in a separate room, I think.

But if it's the kind of thing that facilitates illegal swiping of books, then I want it to die. Most authors make precious little per book sold and don't need another way to be ripped off.

and it seems like it takes up a lot less space than a couple of pallets of books that might or might not sit in the store for 6 months

@WearingBlue4BillyMays_GitEmSteveDave: A print newspaper that's behind the times? You don't say...

@craigkay: Or about three years experience as a secretary supporting engineers.

I was driving down the road the other day...and I saw a store that was like a giant Kindle...they already had the books printed and bound for you...all you had to do was go in, find the book you wanted...and then buy it. Of course, the selection was slightly more limited than the Internets.

Seemed like a great business concept until seeing the video. Too slow, too many moving parts to break down, and takes up too much space. Seems like a low labor machine, but physically moving a book through computer sensors must mean a lot of adjustments and downtime with malfunctions.

@Rectilinear Propagation: Yes, spiral bound would be a kick-ass option.

second, the espresso seems potentially incredibly cool. smaller bookstores being able to compete, sock-wise, with bigger bookstores, or even with amazon? kind of awesome. and better access to rare or out-of-print books? awesomer still.

Personally, I prefer a real book over digital media. There's something personal and intimate about turning pages manually, something that's lost in translation to "digital-ness", IMHO.

This should also mean that they can fix errors as soon as they're found so instead of looking up the errata online the correct information is just in the book.

And no book ever has to go out of print.

WOOT!