Can print on demand save the printed book? Lightning Source prez thinks so
“David Taylor, President of Lightning Source, part of the Nashville-based Ingram Content Group, believes that far from the being dead, ‘or even slightly wounded,’ digital technology is powering a genuine revolution in so-called traditional publishing.” – BookBrunch, which also mentions the possibilities of close Lightning Source-Espresso cooperation. Found via E-Reads.
Related: The Espresso Machine, an ATM for books: Will e-books suffer if it takes off?, by TeleRead’s Court Merrigan.
On the e-book side: Check out Books Born Digital: The emerging phenomena of books published first in digital format, in Library Journal—plus a New Scientist piece reminding us that E Ink will be demoing the latest color prototype on May 31. Remember, color is much cheaper to include in e-books than in paper books. I’m surprised more nonfiction e-books don’t come with photos. As increasing numbers of books get “born digital,” perhaps this will change, especially with color in the mix.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:55 pm
The fact that New Scientist is starting to pick up these stories registers a big change in interest in the importance of ebooks – something that we can smugly say we knew would happen.
It’s not only pictures that will be important – imagine learning languages with a text book and an mp3 file of the words being pronounced as you read, or seeing a map pop up or pictures with a travel book. I don’t think we have even started to mine this technology yet.