Most of the books printed and shipped are never sold! That is why it is such a great idea to print books, in publishers quality, on demand, in the right place, right time and right volume ie piece by piece sold. And it only takes the time to drink an espresso to wait for it. It can be any book digitally available, On demand Book even takes care of the fees for copyright. Sometimes you prefer a hardcopy over a digital version (which is the most sustainable alternative if you read a lot, after 22-23 books the device’s environmental load is “paid back”).
In a series of lectures in 1999 at the New York Public Library, Jason Epstein outlined his vision of the next generation of POD technology: a fully automatic, low-cost device that could be placed in a neighborhood bookshop, coffee shop, newsstand, library, hotel, even aboard a cruise ship or in airports. Unknown to Mr. Epstein, a prototype of the machine he envisioned actually existed in the St. Louis workshop of its inventor, Jeff Marsh. Mr. Marsh remains actively involved with ODB in research, development, and design.
In 2003 On Demand Books integrated it with the digital world. A generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided important seed funding for ODB to develop, test, and build the first beta version of the machine. First installed at the World Bank InfoShop in Washington, D.C. in April 2006 where it printed thousands of World Bank publications. A second beta machine, at The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was installed to print books in Arabic. Since then additional EBMs have printed an enormous volume of books at numerous installations worldwide. They partnered up with Xerox—who is selling, leasing, and servicing the EBM worldwide.
Comments by our Users
Be the first to write a comment for this item.