[LINK] The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

[Ivan Trundle]

On 05/02/2009, at 9:10 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> POD publishers are
> expanding, like lulu.com and iUniverse. But I haven't heard much more
> about local POD that A&R were to be installing. Has anyone seen or
> bought a POD book from A&R here?
>
> I was reading a few articles on this saying that the wait can be as
> little as a few minutes for the product to be printed, but that must
> be a really short book. I've never seen one, though.

A number of university publishers are already using POD equipment, and  
have done so for at least 5 years or more. There are a few publishers  
that I know of (one in Wagga Wagga, one in Canberra) that make POD  
books, and yes, it is possible to turn them around in less than 10  
minutes (perfect bound).

There was a considerable interest in POD and other printing  
alternatives after the Australian Government funded an investigation  
into the future prospects of the print/publishing industry in  
Australia around 7-8 years ago (I had a direct involvement).  
Interestingly, the results of that investigation were produced in  
print, running to 8 volumes...

iT

ps. also an RSS junkie, because I like my news today, not the day  
after (and feeds are gradually displacing the papers, except the  
Saturday tomes)

--
Ivan Trundle
http://itrundle.com ivan at itrundle.com
ph: +61 (0)418 244 259 fx: +61 (0)2 6286 8742 skype: callto://ivanovitchk