This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Books Print on Demand Coming to Powell's
Posted by Alison Hallett on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 11:43 AM
Powell's just announced that in March they'll introduce an Espresso Book Machine at their downtown store, which will produce bookstore-quality paperbacks from an extensive catalog of digital titles.
From the press release:
"We are excited to offer this service to our customers, expanding our vast inventory at the City of Books location from one million volumes to nearly limitless volumes," says Miriam Sontz, Chief Operating Officer for Powell's Books. "It is yet another way we can be valuable and relevant to readers and authors as the distribution channels for books continue to evolve. We are thrilled by this opportunity to work with On Demand Books as our business partner in this venture."
It looks like a crappy old printer, doesn't it? A crappy old printer that retails for around $100,000 and can print from over 7 million titles in about 4 minutes. The "business transaction costs are confidential," a Powell's spokesperson told me when I asked how much they spent on the machine, while the prices of the books themselves will "vary on size and production costs but would generally average between $15-25."
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So they really think people are going to buy 10,000 books printed on demand at the store? Or are they printing these at their warehouse and selling them online?
How about the people who said checking Amazon for better prices was STEALING from local businesses: are you going to go down to Powell's and print a book you could buy online and ship tomorrow?
Most of those who have written a book or a blog want it in a physical form. Publishers only publish 10% of all works they receive. The remaining 90% that publishers have rejected are self-published.
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Also, I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs of the publishing industry, but publishing only 10% of all works submitted sounds like a bad strategy - it's blowing my mind to realize that EVERY BOOK I'VE READ IS ACTUALLY 10 TIMES LONGER THAN I THOUGHT.
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