By Gloria Quintanilla 2012 felt like a decisive year for print. E-Book sales surpassed print book sales on Amazon for the first time, and widely-read publications like Newsweek decided to give up on print media altogether, and instead to transition fully into digital publishing. All the while, pundits are still debating if there is a future for print in a world dominated by digital formats. Similar discussions are going on between book lovers and authors, who are worried about the publishing industry being ill equipped to respond to their demands. So here's the question: Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? Can...

South African IT news site IT Web reports that the University of Johannesburg has just acquired an Espresso Book Machine of its very own. Most of the article summarizes what we already well know about the print-on-demand machine and its uses for printing and binding store-quality paperbacks in mere minutes, but it does quote On Demand Books as projecting over 150 machines installed world-wide by the end of 2012. It also links to a Guardian article from 2009 in which the head of marketing for UK bookstore chain Blackwell suggested that the Espresso “has the potential to be the...

Speaking of the Espresso, a digital publisher’s paen to self-publishing through it led me to a blog post from last year in which librarian Rick Anderson of the University of Utah’s Marriott Library discussed the Espresso’s pros and cons in a bit greater depth than I’ve seen other posts go into. The problems Anderson found mainly have to do with a few technical glitches in the device itself, particularly due to the desert climate of his library being drier than the Espresso was originally designed for. Also, the device has a 45-minute-to-1-hour warmup time due to the glue...

Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin’s latest column is a look at the motives behind Amazon’s competitive behavior, and how it might end legacy publishing. Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that Shatzkin spends the first half of the post giving the devil his due, explaining why Amazon has been looking so good to so many people with manuscripts they want to get out there. If you’ve got the manuscript in hand and you have a choice between [spending months to go from manuscript to published book and earning lower royalties] and having books to show your...

Everyone is paying attention to the e-book pricing fight against Amazon right now, but Bloomberg Businessweek reports there’s another disagreement going on between Amazon and the publishers behind the scenes that nobody has really noticed: the question of print on demand. Amazon already offers its own print on demand services, used for mainly for small independent or self-publishing, and the technology has gotten a lot better over the fifteen years since it was introduced—print-on-demand titles are by now largely indistinguishable from large-print-run paperbacks. The rub is that Amazon would like to expand its print-on-demand operations so that it can print copies of...

Title: The Evolution of E-books and Interlibrary Loan in Academic Libraries Author: Heather Wicht (U. of Colorado) Source: Collaborative Librarianship (3.4, 2011) Abstract: As academic libraries add electronic monographs (e-books) to their collections in increasing numbers, they are frequently losing the ability to lend this portion of their collections via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) due to licensing restrictions. Recently, new options have emerged as alternatives to traditional ILL for e- books. These options introduce new opportunities for collaboration across library departments and with- in consortia. This article discusses the changing nature of resource sharing as related to e-books, ex- amines e-book lending capabilities as they currently exist,...

Egypt's Library of Alexandria has announced that it's placed 19,000 works from its collection on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) network, and plans to add another 150,000 Arabic titles soon. The library operates three EBMs, but this also means people around the world can print replicas of the library's titles from their nearest EBM. You can read the press release on On Demand Books' News page. Via INFOdocket...

I just posted about how Amazon, via self-publishing and agent-based publishing, poses a threat to publishers who still haven’t updated their business model to compete. Here’s a post from self-publishing booster J.A. Konrath’s blog that points out one of the reasons why Amazon is such a threat. Responding to one bookstore calling for a boycott of Stirred, the book he’s publishing under Amazon’s new Thomas & Mercer imprint (and which will consequently be placed as printed editions in bookstores as well as published electronically), Konrath points out that he has done a lot for bookstores over the years, and...

On the Self-Publishing Review blog, self-publishing author Rich Evans ponders whether it’s time to go e-book-only on his next self-published title. His first book, Asylum Lake, was self-published via an Espresso Book Machine, giving him a printed 6x9 paperback book for $10 each. He was able to start out with small print runs and sell them for $15 per book, plowing revenues back into getting more copies to have on hand. He did all right selling the print book for a while, especially after promoting it by releasing the first six chapters serially on-line. The Facebook page for the...

From the press release: Ingram Content Group Inc. today announced it will expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific market by establishing a full-scale Lightning Source print-on-demand book manufacturing operation in Australia. “The expansion of our Lightning Source global print solution into Australia is a significant step in the ongoing mission of Ingram Content Group to help content reach its destination swiftly and efficiently to retailers and readers worldwide,” said David “Skip” Prichard, President and CEO, Ingram Content Group. “This expansion of Ingram’s global presence, from the United Kingdom to France and now Australia, provides publishers with expanded market reach and sales...

A few days ago, Book Business ran an interview with Chief Operating Office Tom Allen of On Demand Books, the manufacturer of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) “ATM for books”. We have covered the Espresso a number of times already; it has the potential to bring the full effect of “print on demand” publishing to local bookstores, libraries, and other institutions everywhere. As of the interview, Allen said, there were 51 EBM devices either installed or pending installation—39 in the USA and Canada and 12 overseas. This was up from 9 installed at the beginning of 2009, and...

Over the course of this summer I've read a couple of great Yankees books: Munson and The Bronx is Burning.  The former was read on my iPad and the latter, because it's not available digitally, was read from a dead tree.  After seeing countless references in both to another Yankee classic, The Bronx Zoo, I decided that should be on my reading list too.  Unfortunately for me, that's another book that's not available digitally.  I also was unable to find a copy at the local brick-and-mortars or even the second-hand bookstore, which got...