Google Books: Classic Books Available via the Espresso Book Machine

It doesn't "decentralize" anything, it just makes a new product for google to sell. There are low volume presses around which are better than this, and as far as printing on a consumer scale, this is uselessly slow. I guess making another product which is a lame version of something already around is the same sort of "innovation" google offered with their new online book database, which is totally not a shit pile version of Project Gutenberg! Of course not! Thanks for the innovation google!

The real value here is in eliminating wastage in retail. Many books, are discarded into the land fill, after the covers are torn off, and sent back for credit. The rest of the unsold books, goes into landfills. This is industry malpractice, and anything that alleviates the bookstream into landfills is a good thing, in my view.

Also, this is not just about public domain titles. When publishers realize that they can sell books for profit for zero investment, look out! Imagine being able to walk into a Starbucks and buy a copy of a book that's been out of print for a couple of decades for less than the original cover price.

I did some conceptual work for OnDemandBooks a couple years ago when they were just beginning to work on the prototypes of the second generation of the machine. Google had nothing to do with the development of this technology and the machines that have been developed from that technology. All Google is doing is providing content. The machine was invented and developed by a (very cool) guy in Missouri.

On Demand as this was written had 16 machines installed at various stores, libraries and universities, and planned to make another 64 available in 2010. The machines are priced at $75,000-$100,000 each and have the capacity to generate around 60,000 300-page books a year.

Comics/graphic novels could be done on these too! SWEET!

Not really. They charge 6 times as much per page for color output. You could do a 100 page graphic novel but it would cost like $40 retail.

Which eliminates all existing forms of quality control. i.e. publishers. BAD.

Google suxX!!!

1. Small demand for
2. A huge number of public domain titles
3. Plus on demand printing
4. ???????????
5. Profit !!!1!