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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

On Demand Books

This is interesting. From On Demand Books LLC:

On Demand Books LLC. is planning to become the first company to globally deploy a low cost (under $50,000), totally automatic book machine, which can produce 15 - 20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention. This technology and process will produce one each of ten different books at the same speed and cost as it can produce ten copies of the same book. ODB plans to be beta-testing the machine and its related technologies at multiple locations, after which it plans to begin commercial use of the machines throughout the world.

Simultaneously, ODB is finalizing technology to access a vast digital library. The content of this library will reside in numerous locations from a multitude of sources. Our system will accept multiple formats, and fully respect licenses and rights.

Check out a movie of the machine in action (QuickTime link).

The machine does not look that pretty, but remember, the first personal computer didn't either.

According to this page on the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation website, they got a sizable grant to build their prototype.

It looks like the first machines will be placed at New York Public Library locations this Fall.

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4 Comments

  1. Adam: fascinating. You can imagine one day where these will be available at your local library branch linked to the giant Google, Amazon or Library of Congress database.

    Comment by Brett - Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 09:12 AM

  2. Wasn't this tried many moons ago by a similar (or possibly the same) company? I thought it turned out to be a huge failure. Hopefully the same won't happen for this machine.

    Comment by Bryan - Tuesday, August 1, 2006 at 05:09 PM

  3. Bryan: I think you're confusing On Demand Books LLC with On Demand Machine Corporation the company that tried to control the web-enabled print on-demand market by going after Lightning Source and Amazon.com.

    From what I've read and been told, the On Demand Machine Corporation's BookMachine system was little more than vaporware and the prototypes they did manage to build were unreliable.

    Comment by Adam - Tuesday, August 1, 2006 at 09:34 PM

  4. You are correct, sir. Thanks for clarification.

    Comment by Bryan - Tuesday, August 1, 2006 at 11:59 PM