3-Minute Book Printing at Your Local Retail Store

Tens of thousands of genealogy and local history books have been printed over the years. Wouldn't you like to walk into a local bookstore and purchase the book(s) of your choice within minutes? That may not be as crazy as it sounds.

Blackwell bookshops in the U.K. are testing new, super-fast in-store printers, called Espresso Book Machines. Similar machines are already used in the World Bank in Washington and at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. The best part about these printers is speed: the standard unit can produce a 200-page book, printed and bound, in just 7 minutes. The higher-priced “double-printer” cuts that time down to just 3 minutes.

Blackwell is only installing a few printers at first. If successful, the company hopes to add the printing on-demand facilities to 60 retail outlets. If it works for Blackwell, you can expect to see other stores install similar systems.

The business plan of Blackwell is simple: local retailers have been losing a lot of business to online bookstores such as Amazon.com. Until now, the local retailers had no means of matching the online bookstores' immense inventory. Anyone can order almost any book online. Local bookstores, the so-called "bricks and mortar" stores, have inventories that are limited by physical space. Local stores can only carry a small percentage of the books out there. They also have higher prices because of the rent they pay, the staff they need, and the cost of shipping the books to the stores.

Amazon's much larger inventory is available by overnight delivery, if required. Amazon.com's warehouse space is presumably cheaper than retail space, and the labor expenses are also cheaper. As a result, Amazon's prices are often much lower than those of retail stores, even after shipping charges are added.

Super-fast printing on-demand solves most of the retail stores' problems. The content of thousands of books could be stored on a local disk drive or on remote file servers connected to each store's Espresso  Book Machine via the Internet. The customer could walk into the store, order a particular book, and then receive the physical book within three minutes. Even Amazon.com cannot match that speed. Blackwell expects the "print on demand" pricing to be very competitive when compared to Amazon.com's prices.

In today's announcement of the new Espresso  Book Machines, Blackwell representatives never mentioned the word "genealogy." However, more than 25,000 genealogy and local history books have already been scanned by others and are now available as digital files. I would think it would be simple for Blackwell or some other bookstore chain to enter into an agreement with one or more of the companies who already have digitized thousands of out-of-copyright genealogy and local history books.

Retailers do have one big advantage over online – there is no delivery time wait. You can walk into the store, purchase the book, and walk out with it. Amazon.com cannot compete with that business model.

You can watch an interesting video of the book machines in operation at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMFh5axDKWU.

Comments

[Albert]

Bonjour,

I'm wondering about the copyright payments due the author and/or publisher.

Albert

[ME in NY]

I can see it now: you go into your local Starbucks, order your book, order your latte, and they are both handed to you at the exact same time!

[Cyndi H.]

Ah...but it kind of takes away the thrill of walking into a bookstore and being able to walk through the rows or shelves, and stacks and stacks of books. Being able to thumb through the book before actually making the decision to purchase or not. Me? I'm sure I would miss that.

But, hey! Love the idea of speedily receiving something I'm in a hurry for!

[Jayne]

The concept is great, but, I too, wonder about the copyright infringements.

Jayne
www.bitsofblueandgray.com

[Dae Powell]

Copyright? Well, you need to read and understand what Mr. Eastman says above:
"thousands of out-of-copyright genealogy and local history books."

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Glenda]

I would imagine that you would be able to get recent books that are not currently in stock in the store also, depending on the publisher. Computerized bar-code order/accounting packages would account for sales and the payment of royalties, and an agreement/contract with the publisher would provide printing authorizations. Much like access to premium websites... access would be denied to bookstores without a "copywrite printing agreement".

[Concetta]

This sounds like a great idea! Imagine being able to find hard-to-locate print copies of genealogy books and being able to print them off. I love it - you could find stuff much more easily that way.

I wish this was coming to the US :-(

[Robert Barnes]

In highlighting this as game-changing technology, Dick is spot on. But not necessarily in the way that he suggests. Print-on-demand is actually likely to strengthen, not weaken, the big on-line booksellers like Amazon.com. Consider: you want a particular book or subject - you will go to the best search engine to find such a book. That's Amazon. So you go there, find the book, and order it. They already offer options on some books of electronic delivery to their "kindle" device, a kind of "electronic book". Or you can have the book delivered to you. Expect Amazon to use print-on-demand for physical books too: you order the book, it is printed at the nearest instant-book printer, and you can either have it delivered or go and pick it up. Or you walk into a store and browse their (branded) Amazon terminal. Who needs to carry stock or ship books around the world? Perhaps airport bookstores, but who else?

Dick makes a good point in saying that print-on-demand (or electronic publication) will make it economical to produce low-demand books, such as genealogy books. Certainly print-on-demand makes it economical to produce a book which won't be a blockbuster, and the production costs are so low that you should be able to channel much more of the sales price to the author (who bears most of the writing costs). But will it be print-on-demand or electronic publication for genealogy books? I like a physical book to read in bed or on a plane, but for a genealogy book I really want to be able to search it, and cut-and-paste bits into my own family history.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out over the next few years.

[Linda]

Robert Barnes...you have some excellent points. Amazon will respond if it is a cost effective way to publish. They are probably in a better position to utilize the Expresso Book Machine if found cost effective. I am questioning it as a cost effective method for local brick and morter stores. Will the consumer really go for getting a book a few hours sooner? Will the cost of publishing via the Expresso book machine really be cheaper than a publisher's costs for a mass produced book? Look at the costs of per page printing at a local office store and that doesn't even include a factor for author and publisher costs for copyrighted materials! I believe that a publisher or even a large business like Amazon with larger and cheaper facilities and access to cheaper printing material prices (due to price breaks with quanities of materials) would still easily compete with a local store with the Expresso Book Machine.

I agree it is nice to curl up with a paper copy of a fiction book. The advantage of brick and mortar stores to me is the ability to browse. I sometimes buy books that I would be hesitant to buy on Amazon because I'm not sure of their content. Since it is right in front of me, I don't go home to figure out if I can save a couple of bucks or not through Amazon. I see the Expresso Book Machine as one more option for consumers but not serious competition or replacement of existing options. I see absolutely no threat to Amazon. Although local book stores will have to modify their business to some degree, I think local book stores (especially chains) are around for awhile. After all, browsing and shopping at stores is a form of entertainment:)

I agree with Robert in that I like downloadable and searchable genealogy books rather than paper books. I have downloaded several applicable family and local history books from HertiageQuest and enjoy having them on a single DVD that I can take with me wherever I research. I prefer sharing my "books" and other genealogy materials with others through digitized methods. The Expresso Book Machine might add an option for those who would like that downloaded book in paper form or publish their own book in limited quanitites IF it is more cost effective than alternative methods.

Downloadable copyrighted books are out there. My husband is an online doctoral student and pays for the rights to downloadable copyrighted textbooks through his university. There is technology to allow it to be used only on the computer it is downloaded on. He used to print the books or portions of the books out from his computer but now prefers the options of reading and highlighting on his computer screen. He travels a lot so transporting printed copies was getting hard on the back:) I have found that over the years that I tend to read online more and also download to files rather than printing things out. In fact, I've scanned many of those previously printed genealogy items and purged the paper. Between the downloaded books and digitized files representing the purged items, I have probably 20 linear feet of materials on a set of DVD's that fit in two small DVD Notebooks (one original and one backup set). When we decide to downsize our home, it will be much easier! I'm really seeing growth in online, downloadable and/or DVD's as the future for genealogy and other special interest books. There are changes in computer technology storage (i.e. floppy to CD to DVD)but to date the changes have not prevented me from transferring data to the new storage format or upgraded software file formats.

I'm really excited too to see how business, goverment and people respond to the changes in our world such as improved and more accessible technology and the depletion of natural resources.

[Teresa]

Do you have any comments about sites where you can put together a book online and they send you as many copies as you like? I've looked at blurb.com and the ancestry press. I'm doing a life history for my father, and blurb.com especially looks like it might be what I need for just a handful of copies. I'm interested in your opinions. Thanks.