Print on Demand takes flight

["Jim O'Donnell" <provost@georgetown.edu>]

Marshall McLuhan said that new technologies are usually 
interpreted as just doing what older technologies do, just faster 
or cheaper or with less physical effort.  This is a sign that POD 
will not just make it easier for "publishers" and even "vanity 
publishers" to do what they've been doing already, but for new 
players to do new things with bound codex artifacts that they 
will call "books".  We'll need a different name for the 
"reviewed, selected, edited, and disseminated to a wide audience" 
thing we've called "book" lately.  Full article free for 
registered NYTimes users.

Jim O'Donnell
Georgetown U.

*****

NYTimes 7/20/06

July 20, 2006
Technology Rewrites the Book
By PETER WAYNER

When Steve Mandel, a management trainer from Santa Cruz, Calif., 
wants to show his friends why he stays up late to peer through a 
telescope, he pulls out a copy of his latest book, "Light in the 
Sky," filled with pictures he has taken of distant nebulae, star 
clusters and galaxies.

"I consistently get a very big 'Wow!' The printing of my photos 
was spectacular - I did not really expect them to come out so 
well." he said. "This is as good as any book in a bookstore."

Mr. Mandel, 56, put his book together himself with free software 
from Blurb.com. The 119-page edition is printed on coated paper, 
bound with a linen fabric hard cover, and then wrapped with a 
dust jacket. Anyone who wants one can buy it for $37.95, and 
Blurb will make a copy just for that buyer.

The print-on-demand business is gradually moving toward the 
center of the marketplace. What began as a way for publishers to 
reduce their inventory and stop wasting paper is becoming a tool 
for anyone who needs a bound document. Short-run presses can turn 
out books economically in small quantities or singly, and new 
software simplifies the process of designing a book.

As the technology becomes simpler, the market is expanding beyond 
the earliest adopters, the aspiring authors. The first companies 
like AuthorHouse, Xlibris, iUniverse and others pushed themselves 
as new models of publishing, with an eye on shaking up the dusty 
book business. They aimed at authors looking for someone to edit 
a manuscript, lay out the book and bring it to market.

The newer ventures also produce bound books, but they do not 
offer the same hand-holding or the same drive for the best-seller 
list. Blurb's product will appeal to people searching for a 
publisher, but its business is aimed at anyone who needs a 
professional-looking book, from architects with plans to present 
to clients, to travelers looking to immortalize a trip.

---snip--

copyright 2006 The New York Times