Friday, May 15, 2009
This describes an invention that might do away with shelves in bookstores: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/24/espresso-book-machine-launches.
It looks like a humongous photocopy machine. You feed it a digital book. Within a few minutes (at 100 pages per minute) it prints the book, binds it, and applies the cover. You get a toasty warm real book (with a temporarily tacky cover).
I can see a job opportunity for a shoemaker-like guy in the corner who'll put a hardcover on it for a few dollars.
Pretty cool.
(I hope that no one sees this as doing away with publishing companies. We still need editing and advertising, and centralized distribution. Especially editing. By expert editors. Editors who know how to spell and the difference between "lose" and "loose".)
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