Every Book You Have Ever Wanted
Throughout history there’s been plenty written on every subject. Much of it is either out of print or hard to find. Coupling technology with information is yielding a new seemingly low cost effective way to blow the dust off the covers of these old texts.
It’s happening on a couple of fronts. Google has been digitizing classics for some time and has recently entered into an agreement with the makers of an automated book binding machine. Another effort is known as the Guttenberg project
On 9/28/2009 Alan Reiter published a story about a new automated distribution model for book sales.
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=182325&
In it he introduces the Espresso Book Machine that is an on demand publishing outlet.
When you consider the print on demand business model it’s really an example of distributed manufacturing.
Each automated machine is its own manufacturing plant churning out a book one at a time from a digital library of millions of titles. Compare the physical inventory of finished books to the raw materials inventory of ink and paper and you’ll get the idea. It’s far more efficient to carry raw materials that can be quickly manufactured into what is usually held in finished goods inventory. The throughput matches the demand.
What’s making the model viable is the flexibility of the medium. Hard copy books are just not as portable as the information they contain. Digitizing them also makes them more useful. Digital editions are searchable and can be far more useful. Developing semantic search technologies are making search across volumes possible.
Automation combined with the flexibility of information makes this possible.
