Possible knockout counterpunch in the amazon vs POD fiasco

This is a reprint of an article on another forum, originally posted by Ron Kruger

The original article is HERE.


Today Publisher's Weekly announced a simply stunning partnership between On Demand Books (owners of The Espresso Printing Press technology) and Lightning Source (the giant print-on-demand company owned by distribution giant Ingram Inc.)

What this partnership means is On Demand Books will have access to data at Lightning Source, allowing Espresso owners to print any book in Lightning Source's catalogue. Any book. Printed in minutes. For a fraction of the cost of conventionally published books.

Now, agreed you won't find Espresso machines in your local Starbucks, Chapters or library. At the moment there are only a few in commercial use:

- University of Alberta Bookstore in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada;
- the Internet Archive Office in San Francisco, California;
- the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont;
- the Bibliotheca Alexandrina at Alexandria, Egypt;
- and there will soon be EBM’s at the New Orleans’ Public Library in New Orleans, Louisiana,
- The University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan and at
- DA Information Services in Mitcham, Australia

This news becomes even more remarkable in light of Amazon's recent move after purchasing the print-on-demand company, BookSurge, requiring their POD publishers to use Amazon's services or face delisting of their books.

It would appear Amazon, in its blatant attempt at monopoly, is flying in the face of a revolution in publishing that will, eventually, leave them staggering. The Espresso and Lightning Source's visionary partnership will do everything to energize not only bricks and mortar stores, but libraries and other walk-in business who want to cater to readers, but small publishers and independent authors.

I can see these thing sitting next to, or replacing, the magazine racks in grocery stores. Thousands of books and perodicals at your fingertips, searchable in every way now available on the internet.

Maybe Amazon's move was an effort to get as much of the pie as possible before being pushed away from the table.


My comments on this:

Whoa! That's visionary, all right. I always thought this was the real future of this stuff. (The Internet should mean getting rid of the need for truck drivers)

I always thought it would happen to music: have little booths where you could pick songs and have them put on a record or tape for you. Well, that one happened really different, and eliminated all of the brick-and-mortar linkup.

This is pretty amazing. I would say Starbucks is looking right now at having this thing in their stores. It's really natural. I could see bookstores having it, actually, limited to POD books and lines they don't carry.

I could easily see amazon being in the position of RIAA on music ownership...fighting a rear-guard battle against the future that even some of the new recording execs are starting to see as futile.

Gee, wonder when they came up with this idea?