Excerpt from an AP article--to read the entire piece, click here.Google to reincarnate e-books
John Bivens, head of services and support for On
Demand Books, demonstrates the printing of a book
from an Espresso Book Machine at Google
headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Wednesday
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE , Associated Press
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Google Inc. is giving 2
million books in its digital library a chance to be
reincarnated as paperbacks.
As part of a deal announced Thursday, Google is
opening up part of its index to the maker of a
high-speed publishing machine that can
manufacture a paperback-bound book of about
300 pages in under five minutes. The new service
is an acknowledgment by the Internet search
leader that not everyone wants their books
served up on a computer or an electronic reader
like those made by Amazon.com Inc. and Sony
Inc.
The "Espresso Book Machine" has been around
for several years already, but it figures to become
a hotter commodity now that it has access to so
many books scanned from some of the world's
largest libraries. And On Demand Books, the
Espresso's maker, potentially could get access to
even more hard-to-find books if Google wins
court approval of a class-action settlement giving
it the right to sell out-of-print books.
"This is a seminal event for us," said Dane Neller,
On Demand Books' chief executive, as he oversaw
a demonstration of the Espresso Book Machine
Wednesday at Google's Mountain View, Calif.,
headquarters.
In the background, some of the books that
Google spent the past five years scanning into a
digital format were returning to their paper
origins.
"It's like things are coming full circle," Google
spokeswoman Jennie Johnson said. "This will
allow people to pick up the physical copy of a
book even if there may be just one or two other
copies in some library in this country, or maybe
it's not even available in this country at all."
On Demand's printing machines already are in
more than a dozen locations in the United States,
Canada, Australia, England and Egypt, mostly at
campus book stores, libraries and small retailers.
The Harvard Book Store will be among the first
already equipped with an instant-publishing
machine to have access to Google's digital library.
The books published by The Espresso Machine
will have a recommended sales price of $8 per
copy, although the final decision will be left to
each retailer. New York-based On Demand Books
will get a $1 of each sale with another buck going
to Google, which says it will donate its
commission to charities and other nonprofit
causes.
The high-speed publishing machine itself sells for
about $100,000, although On Demand Books is
willing to lease the equipment to retailers instead.
For starters, Google is only allowing The Espresso
Machine to publish from the section of its digital
library that consists of 2 million books no longer
protected by copyright.
No comments:
Post a Comment