"print on demand" entries

Publishing News: Google's win may be Amazon's loss

Google and France reach an agreement, a look at the Espresso Book Machine, and ebook industry predictions.

Book-scanning lawsuits against Google were dropped in France, perhaps spelling trouble for Amazon in Europe. Elsewhere, the Espresso Book Machine is proving a plus for retailers and authors, and Laura Hazard Owen digs into PricewaterhouseCoopers' data.

Books should be as easy to create as websites

Hugh McGuire on his new PressBooks publishing platform.

In this TOC podcast, PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire talks about the current state and future plans for this new book production platform PressBooks.

Sifting Through All These Books

We have a massive and growing supply and demand imbalance in the book business. And, as the technologies for creating and distributing books becomes trivial, the supply of books is just going to keep growing exponentially…. How are people going to sift through all these books to find what they want?

Four short links: 1 July 2009

Four short links: 1 July 2009

Web Awards, Speed Thrills, Magazines in the Cloud, Augmented Reality

  1. The Onyas — New Zealand web design awards launch, from the people behind Webstock and Full Code Press. The name comes from “good on ya”, the highest praise that traditionally taciturn New Zealanders are allowed by law to give.
  2. The Year of Business Metrics: Don’t make your users run away! — wrapup of the Velocity conference. AOL: Users who had a slower experience view far fewer pages. Some interesting notes on performance from a Google-Bing study: Notice that as the delays get longer the Time To Click increases at a more extreme rate (1000ms increases by 1900ms). The theory is that the user gets distracted and unengaged in the page. In other words, they’ve lost the user’s full attention and have to get it back. […] As much as five weeks later, some users, especially those who saw delays greater than 400MS, were still searching less than before. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
  3. Printcasting — very simple content management system for print magazines that lets anyone start a magazine, add content, sign up contributors, sell ads, and go. Clever!
  4. Pachube Augmented Reality Hack — sexy hack that pushes all my buttons: computer vision, Arduino, sensor network, ubiquitous computing, pervasive alternate reality cyborg villians with chalk designs hellbent on world domination and the enslavement of the human race to use as meatsack AA batteries for their sex toys. Okay, four out of five ain’t bad. (via bruces on Twitter)

Pachube Augmented Reality Demo

At TOC: A Different Way of Doing Booth Books

At most of our conferences, we sell books from our booth, and last year's TOC Conference was no exception. This year we're trying something a bit different — including a way to browse those books virtually: Test drive the Espresso Book Machine. Near the O'Reilly booth we've arranged a very special debut of the 2nd-generation EBM, and pre-loaded it with…

Slides from "Making the Case for POD" Webcast

Brian O'Leary had made his slides available from this week's TOC Webcast, "Making the Case for POD." A complete recording of the event will also be posted here soon….

[TOC Webcast] Tomorrow: Making the Case for Print on Demand

Tools of Change for Publishing will host a free webcast tomorrow at 1 p.m. eastern (10 a.m. pacific). Presenter Brian O'Leary will discuss "Making the Case for Print on Demand." Webcast Overview Publishers who dismiss the use of print-on-demand (POD) technologies as too expensive may be missing an opportunity to better manage their inventory, total costs and the unit…

[TOC Webcast] Making the Case for Print on Demand

Tools of Change for Publishing will host "Making the Case for Print on Demand," a free webcast with presenter Brian O'Leary, on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. eastern (10 a.m. pacific). Webcast Overview Publishers who dismiss the use of print-on-demand (POD) technologies as too expensive may be missing an opportunity to better manage their inventory, total costs and…

Open Question: How Can Publishers Capitalize on Hot Topics?

It's never been easier to crank out a quickie book, but is this the best way to capitalize on a hot topic? Please share your thoughts.

Amazon Launches UK POD Service; Partner Unknown

TheBookseller says Amazon is launching a print-on-demand service in the United Kingdom: Amazon.com owns POD publisher BookSurge in the US, but the UK business has not divulged who will be handling the printing of POD titles in the UK. In April, a spokesperson for Amazon.co.uk said the company — at that time — had no plans to bring BookSurge to…