At Midnight last night a friend of mine demonstrated the new Print on Demand machine at Books-A-Million.

Not just for printing books that are stored for use on such machines (supposedly 7 Million books), but for self publishing.

I first saw a PoD machine about fifteen years or a bit more ago, and my thought then was that it was what local bookstores needed to do in order to compete with Amazon.

I didn't expect it to take fifteen years to happen, and much has changed since then - most particularly e-readers have become popular.

I will also say, though, that the PoD machine that I saw way back then gave me the worst case of techno lust that I have ever had. (And it is not much diminished.)

My thought then, as now, was that it would be a wonderful thing for RPG material.

So, thoughts?

Is it too little, too late?

A glimmer of hope? (This is my feeling - it may or may not amount to much, but it is hope.)

Or just 'Dang! I want one!'?

The Auld Grump - Dang! I want one!

That's an interesting question. I don't think it's going to be enough to save the big-store book chains in-and-of-itself (especially with the popularity of e-readers), but it could be a step in the right direction. If they added in some other services as well - like the ebook version of a novel purchased being available to download straight to your e-reader - that would get them closer.

That said, I think this is going to put more pressure on the bookseller chains, as I imagine this would work more like Redbox than an in-store salvation. Unless there's something added to the store that the PoD machine wouldn't provide (for example, a way to resell your book once you've finished with it), there's really not any reason to attach it to a bookstore.

One final, rambling note - between the each of creating DVDs on demand, this, and the quickly falling price of 3d printing, this could allow for a kind of 'super kinkos', where you can go in and get almost anything you want printed out for you right there, from books to movies to fully realized (though unpainted) board games.

I've never seen a PoD machine, but it sounds interesting. Does it print a cover? Either hard or soft cover...

I think it could diminish distributor needs and go directly from the publisher to retailer/customer, which would drop prices and increase benefits to the publisher directly.

It does sound more like a Staples/Kinkos kind of machine than a book store one to me.

It can, and does, create cardstock covers, in color.

Interior printing can also be in color (but costs more).

Some machines can do hardcovers - I have a hardcover of Spycraft that was made using a PoD machine... but it cheated, basically binding a perfect bound book into hard covers, with a gap at the bottom to allow flex. (This was during the period where Mongoose Publishing had a PoD machine, and was setting up partnerships through its Flaming Cobra imprint.)

But I think that the hard covers need to be created before hand, and the machine just puts them into the covers - it does not print and laminate the hardcovers themselves.

I... think that the ability for self publishers to carry the data into BaM! and have proofs in hand the same day may make a difference - I know that I am considering it.

What I do not yet have is prices - I would be looking at 64 or 128 page documents, 8x11, or so with color covers, created first as PDFs, then sent to the PoD.

There were some differences between this and the one that I saw fifteen years ago - the one fifteen years ago was faster, but could not do color interiors. It was also a single unit - this one is a two part unit, with the printing part separate from the binding part. (That said - the output from the printer shoots straight into the binder - it does not need to be gathered together and put into the binding half by hand. While in two parts it is functionally a single machine.)

The outside of the binding unit is transparent - you can see the books being bound.

My friend is one of four people at BaM! that is qualified on the machine - and Thanksgiving was her day off. They called her at 11 in the morning and asked if she could work the machine. The person that was scheduled had a bad ear infection. (Bad enough that she had to go to the hospital.)

So... she was being paid triple time and a half to do a part of the job that she enjoys, in front of an audience, which she loves. (This is the same woman that dragged me into a punk band, and whom I have dragged to perform several gigs in school rooms. Having an audience is not something that deters her.)

The Auld Grump