A lot of people in the document business look at business from a technology point of view and then 'invent' all kind of advantages.

Henry Fords dream was to make a car for $500,- and this was not possible with the production technology and methods of that time. So he needed a solution to fulfill his dream and 'invented' the conveyer belt for production. Did we have a Ford when the conveyer belt was invented first?

So my question is: what really improvent does On Demand books deliver for the book buyer?

Are books cheaper now? I mean really cheaper!

Do I find more books that meets my interrest and do i buy them?

Does a publisher earn more money by bringing more books?

Yes, I am working in the documentindustry too, so I would like to have the positive answer!

The improvement for the book buyer, as I see it, is primarily in the increasing selection of books to choose from. This could mean bringing out-of-print books back into print or providing an easy method for authors to self-publish their work. Making books cheaper isn't necessarily the goal. Making them available is. If a publisher can make money from out-of-print books, that is a significant advantage. It is basically creating a revenue stream where there was none before. If a publisher can benefit from a re-birth of interest in an older title, without having to re-print. That's important too. The traditional publishing paradigm is dependent on printing large quantities of books and counting on success through sales in retail stores. On demand books open up a new channel that has exciting possibilities for publishers.

@jim. Thank you for joining me in the discussion. That is where a weblog on his best. Hopefully others join us too!

A agree that publishers can take advantage from the On Demand technology. And like other industries: to improve business you have to innovate production and services.

Beside on demand production you also should solve the distribution channel. Here we have book logistic centers covering the dutch market

One of the problems of a bookstore is the huge amount of booktitles and their limited floor space. In the Netherlands bookstores have 1 - 3 copies (except the populars) of a book with a redelivery of 2 days. So sell and reorder.
So they can't store more books...

For the customer it is not interesting to know if a book is published on demand or not, he just want to have it now, or get it delivered in 2-3 days.

Solution 1:
Build an fully automatic Book On Demand production system at the book logistic center and produce on order (just as we do with manuals, cars, furniture).

Solution 2:
Put BookMaker machines out of the street (could be a bookshop..) where customers pick a book from the database, drink a coffee and go with the JIT produced book (just as we do with 1 hour photoshops).

Solution 3:
We order on internet and get the book delivered in 2-3 days. In this case it is a case of smart production (like t-shirts and stationary paper)

Oce started DNN, The Digital NewsPaper Network. It solves excisting problems:
- Time lap (adding value)
- Distribution (reducing costs)
- Synergy(investement to high per publisher)
Reading your favourite newspaper at any place on the world while it is still fresh

Do you join me in starting The Digital Book Publishing Network (DBPN) (c)2006 today?

What a great question and certainly one that needs to be understood. First let’s set some definitions. On Demand Print is the ability to fulfill the print request of an end user for any document, and in this case we are talking about a book, that does not exist in a physical inventory but does exist in a digital or virtual inventory for immediate replication into a physical form.

We are not talking about the use of digital print to improve inventory management models as that is a different question and indeed is one that does not impact the availability or the retail price of the book.

On Demand Digital Print and the title that thrive in its environment is a classic case of a solution driven by the laws of supply and demand. On Demand Digital Print is all about expanding the selection of titles available to the end users above and beyond what the traditional supply system fueled by offset print can support in a reasonably economic fashion.

This is not about making books cheaper but rather keeping more books in print at a reasonable price which is in fact determined by the consumer who is asking for the title to be printed from its digital inventory and not browsing it up from the shelf at the book store. The end result is that Publishers and distributors can afford to keep more title available with out the burden of costs that are created in a system that is supported only by the offset print process. The offset process creates, in places, excess inventory that may in fact stay around for years. This drives up the costs of the books and makes titles that move slowly less attractive economically for the Publishers. When offset was the only solution the only alternative for the Publisher was, at some point, to take the title out of print.

Every book that a Publisher can keep in print ECONOMICALLY will contribute to improved performance. The growth of the number of units and titles that are produced by Lightening Source is a testament to the success of this strategy. 560,000 unique SKU’s, 1,000,000+ units per month and an average over of 1.8 books, (Info Trends Analysis March 24, 2006), this is a market with both scale and legs.

It is not a question of less expensive; it is a question of expanded choices for the consumer at a reasonable price that does not burden the other costs of the book publishing system.

Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and others are all involved in projects to digitize content from the great libraries of the world. Millions and millions of volumes that have been out of print for years will become available. I would venture to guess that many of the titles that are being scanned will never be printed but there will be many that researchers, scholars, and subject matter specialists and enthusiasts will pay any amount of money to have in physical form. They will acquire these titles from distributors who are utilizing an On Demand Digital Print Solution. In this case it will be the end user who profits from the expanded choice. This is not an issue of On Demand but rather Now Available versus no availability. I think that as this base of information expands the amount of demand will blossom at a rate that will indicate that we are just starting up the market demand curve for Digital Books.

John Conley
Vice President of the Book Publishing Business, Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry, Xerox

Johan,
I'm not a big proponent of kiosk-style bookmaking devices. To me the difficult issue isn't making a compact machine that can spit out a softcover book. Someone will figure out how to do that some day in a device with the reliability of a soda machine. The real issue is having a document library of millions of books to choose from. A book kiosk is worthless if the selection is limited. And what is a book kiosk? A device with a computer interface tied to a mini-manufacturing site. I don't see why I need to go into the bookstore to look at the selection when I could just as easily select a book from my Internet-connected computer at home. And if I do that then why does it matter where the book is manufactured?

I know that a lot of people think that you have to get the sale while the customer is in the store, but that's looking at it from the traditional retail bricks & mortar perspective. And I think it misses the point of "The Long Tail" theory, which is that the Internet and technologies like on-demand books are opening up new opportunities that don't have to be tied to physical locations like bookstores.