Modern Book Binding Machines.

[Ysgarran]

I heard this on NPR this morning:
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1593646

Someone has a professional book binding machine that sells for about 1300$. I don't know what the 'per book'/'per page' costs would be using a machine like this. The NPR article mentions that it might be usefull for reviving out of print books. I really thought that it might find a niche in the PDF market.

http://www.powis.com/index/index.asp

Does anyone have any exposure to these newer book binding machines? I have to wonder if a small amount of money could be made by offering an internet services to take PDFs and turn them into books. I have no idea of what some of the operating expenses would be for a book binding machine like this.

The one use mentioned (a book mobile in Mozambique) made it seem the cost of printing a book would be pretty cheap.

Just random thoughts that I though some of the publsihers here might be able to comment on with more insight.

edit:
Oops, this probably should have gone into the e-publishing forum...

Ysgarran.

 

[yangnome]

My friend has one of these in his garage. He bought it about a year ago, possibly form the guy who invented it. He runs a small publishing company, mainly for family and friends.

From what I understand, it isn't that expensive to make books with the machine, I think it costs less than a dollar a book.

I approached him about making gaming stuff, either stuff I had written, or PDFs I had bought. The only problem with that is that the machine isn't set up to print a book the typical gaming module size. It has a page cutter right after the printer that cuts a normal 8*11 page in half, so a book comes out set at 8*5.5, good for a paperback, but you would need to reset any current gaming PDFs you would want to do.

He did say he could probably pick up the paper and disconnect the cutter to make a normal module sized book, but that would also likely require additional tools for binding ( don't think the binding tool is large enough to do an 8*11 book.)

Overall teh quality of the books isn't bad, but it isn't fantastic either (I'd say it comes out looking a little less professional than something you would buy in teh bookstore). Getting the covers positioned correctly is a trick, but with the cheap cost of production, its easy to fix with trial and error. If you got the right tools to do gaming stuff though, that might not be an issue as you could use staples to do the binding rather than the glue.

It's been awhile since I've talked to my friend about it, but I could ask and make sure my facts are right on costs and abilities of the machine.

The nice thing about the machine is that it makes for a really easy print on demand service. One could sell PDFs on a site and print up books only when ordered, cutting down further on overhead.

The mahine is also fairly portable, which would make it easy to take along to a con or something in case you ran out of books. Of course, you'd need electrical outlets for the printer and compressor and such.