Hot on the heels of its $125 million dollar settlement with book publishers over the company’s plan to scan out-of-print books and add them to its online search capability, Google now wants to be the place people go to read. The book-scanning project is being expanded to include in-print books with the links to buy them. Google expects it to go live sometime in 2009. The catch is that the books can only be read on a computer. This puts them into competition with Amazon which also envisions people curling up with their laptop to read the latest from a favored author.

I suppose there are those who will think this is marvelous, and who will enjoy the instant gratification of buying a book online and being able to enjoy it immediately, but I think it really changes the experience of reading and overcomplicates what is really a simple process. Books are totally portable, can be read anywhere there is a reasonable light source, and don’t depend on batteries (unless you read by flashlight). Books can be passed along to friends and family, and when placed in a bookcase are a monument to the curiosity and interests of the reader. Then there is the tactility of a book, the turning of the pages, and yes, the lack of technology required to simply read. Many of us already spend more time than we’d like staring at a computer screen and I question how many will want to do their personal reading –which is often a time of escape from the day-to-day– just a click away from the distractions of emails and the internet.

Some years back Frank Romano famously pointed out that printed books will survive because of the Three Bs: Bedroom, Bathroom and Beach. He wasn’t wrong then and his insight holds true today.

Book Business Magazine has an article in this month’s issue on digital book printing and print on-demand (available online here).

The article points out the success PublicAffairs, an imprint of The Perseus Books Group had with moving one its fast selling books to a print on-demand model at Lighting Source:

Demand went vertical, and there was a period of time when orders were coming in and they [didn’t have] any copies … [available] anywhere,” says Lightning Source President David Taylor. “So John Ingram said to Peter Osnos, ‘Look, give us the file, and we’ll set it up as an on-demand model, and we’ll fulfill at least some of those orders.’ ”

The problem for Perseus became an opportunity for Ingram to show the world the value of on-demand digital printing.

“We got the file from them on the Monday morning after BookExpo America, and we were printing the first books that afternoon,” Taylor recounts. “We actually moved over our entire casebook production to just that book for a period of 48 hours. We printed several thousand copies, and those were orders that otherwise would have just [been lost] or would have not been fulfilled. When the offset order came back in, we switched it off.”

An interesting comment from Edwards Brothers CEO John Edwards on not using digital to describe the printing process:

“I’m trying to not call it digital anymore,” he says. “It’s short-run. I don’t want to have to differentiate anymore [between digital and offset]. We’re focusing on making it seamless for the publishing community as far as how [a book is] made.”

This makes a lot of sense. There are still a lot of print buyers in the industry that perceive digital as inferior. Something that is easily debunked by showing printed product samples.

Read the whole article at Book Business.

At drupa 2008, Noel Ward, Director of Trade Show Coverage for WhatTheyThink.com spoke with a few Océ’s Execs on digital printing and the technology Océ is bringing to market.

Océ ColorWave 600 at drupa 2008

Noel Ward with with Jaap van’t Ooster on Océ’s ColorWave 600.

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Océ’s Jetstream technology

Noel Ward with with Oce’s Engelbert Stranegger on Océ’s Jetstream technology.

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Printing Books

Noel Ward with with Océ’s Ap Stout on Printing Books with the VarioPrint 6250 at drupa 2008.

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Bibliographic information provider R.R. Bowker last week released statistics on U.S. book publishing for 2007. Their findings suggest U.S. title output in 2007 increased slightly to 276,649 new titles and editions, up from the 274,416 that were published in 2006.

According to R.R. Bowker traditional book publishing was basically flat last year. While a “staggering rise in the reported number of “On Demand” and short-run books to 134,773, pushing the grand total for projected 2007 U.S. book output to 411,422 books.”

“The most startling development last year is the reporting of ‘On Demand’ titles, leading to a stunning five-fold increase of new titles in the unclassified category, which mostly consists of reprints of public domain titles and other short-run books,” said Kelly Gallagher, general manager of business intelligence. “It will be interesting to monitor this category in 2008 in order to get a sense of whether this is a sustainable trend or a one-year spike.”