It is always interesting to see new digital offers especially one that potentially can change the way we work and support the existing publishing channels. We have written before about the need to change the print on demand model from print and distribute to distribute and print. Changing the wasteful trucking of books and making the books truly on demand at purchase.
We have also written before about the PSik 1Book™ model D which is PSik’s 2nd generation Books-on-Demand (BOD) system which prints and binds paperback perfectbound books in black & white and colour. The system claims to be able to print an average 250-page book in five to seven minutes and not require a dedicated operator.
PSiK is an Israeli company who have developed the technology and are now showing their latest model at the Drupa show in Germany. Why Drupa and not BEA and LBF? They may believe that the printer is still in change of the print and therefore it is better to align with them but as we have seen with Booksurge and LSI it is the channel that can make or break technology.
The pricing of the model appears to be similar to that offered by the Espresso POD machine but the footprint looks a lot smaller. To see more www.1book.com
All this comes on the day that the UK’s Shadow Minister for Culture Ed Vaizey is reported The Bookseller on his ideas beefing up the role of libraries and positioning them in the heart of the community. At a time when the book budget is the book budget in a library community POD services would appear to offer much.
