1Book POD offer

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.

Ok where is the catch?

How often do we see something and ask why didn’t I know about it? If I didn’t know about it is there something wrong with it? Does anyone know about it or is it the ‘best kept secret’?

Well we received an email from PSik Solutions pointing us to their 1Book Print on Demand system. Our first reaction was that it looked small and neatly compact and the size of a big photocopier so what’s wrong with it?

It prints black and white, perfect bound books and a full colour cover and can produce a 300 page book in 6 to 8 minutes. It works unattended with the book merely dropping out of the front. In fact the selection and payment can be performed making it more like an on demand kiosk. So where is the catch?

The books are held as PDFs on an offline on a trusted DRM server which not only downloads the files but keeps track of transactions re royalty payments. The production costs is around $3 – 3.5 a 300 page book, printing at 600 and 1200 dpi and handling a maximum of 700 page and minimum 100 page books. It can produce books to a maximum size of 200mm x 280mm and minimum of 115mm x 180mm. We are still waiting for the catch.

They even have a video of it action on their web site using a HP9050dn printer or a Xerox WorkCentre 275 but it can also use a Kyocera FS-9520dn. It is not new and has been around for a couple of years!

Ok we give up unless it costs a bomb, is unreliable or is short of something we missed what’s wrong with it? If it does the business we could at last see true demand printing based on distribute and print as opposed to today’s pseudo short print run print and distribute model.