An Article About Print-on-Demand, Publishing, and the Future
MatrixGamer:
I'm reminded of the 1970's when offset printing pushed letter presses out of the market. Guttenburg was dead and everyone who had letterpresses and type sold them off along with the old smyth sewing machines. The old technology didn't completely disappear - it just became a more expensive specialty product.
I'm certain POD machines in stores (with a single sample on display) will be what drives the mass market. I thought that the first time I heard about Lightning Press in the 90's. I don't think that will make it much easier for small companies to sell product because the marketing is the harder task and it won't go away. I can also easily see specialty sewn and printed hardback books finding a nitch. It's the binding that will make the difference. Maybe when I get out of game making I'll turn to that market. Say $50 for a hardback sewn book.
Interesting thought - it takes printing back in to the art market.
Chris Engle
Hamster Press
guildofblades:
Hi Chris,
For sure. When soft cover books from EBMs become the norm, we'll bring in the hard cover case makers. be worth it then. Right now, they are just too pricey, once labor is factored in, to make hard covers on demand.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
Lance D. Allen:
Wow, you know Chris (K), when you said that "books themselves [are rendered] an archaic artifact of communication history" I nodded in agreement that you were probably right, and felt more than a little sad.
As nonsensical as it may seem, there's just something... to be loved about dead-tree versions of books.
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Lance,
Of course.
But remember that many folks were sad when writing started become common. After all, they argued, what would happen to the mind if we didn't have entrust the words that mattered to memory.
Everyone values what is familiar, and what is familiar dies off, replaced by something new. And this is clearer in the case of how we record and transmit information than anything else I can think of.
It's just part of life. Not just change, but so often the sadness that comes with it.
Although for some, instead of sadness, there is the excitement for the new thing. I had lunch with a women recently out of college the other day. She was pretty much reading me the riot act, demanding why the shows she wanted to watch weren't easily available on her iPhone, since she never watched anything on a TV and even watching shows on her laptop was becoming archaic. It happens to everything!
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