The future of bookstores.
I believe it is time for bookstores to reinvent themselves or die. My modest proposal is for them to borrow the publish-on-demand model. For those of you unfamiliar with this, a publish-on-demand book is printed when you click “place order.” There is no inventory, no associated costs, no warehouses, nothing like that at all. The book in paperback form does not exist until you want it.
Now imagine for a moment the bookstore with the sophisticated printer required to print such books. For the record, I have no idea what they look like, but how complicated could it be? And if it is complicated, how long until a tech-savvy entrepreneur reinvents the technology to be cheaper and more efficient? (I hope one of you is reading this.)
So, there you are in the bookstore, browsing the shelves of covers (not books), or perhaps single copies of books (printed at the store naturally). You decide you like one, so you take the cover over to the counter and say the magic words “I want to buy this, please.” The clerk enters your order, takes your money, and replies, “Thank you, here is a coupon for a complimentary coffee, donut, bagel, whatever you like at our Starbucks over there. Relax for ten minutes and enjoy a drink on us while your book is made. It will come to you at your table, literally, hot off the presses.”
8 comments:
The Portland State University (PSU) bookstore is one of, I believe, only two campuses in the nation to have one such on-demand printer in the university bookstore. I believe it is currently only for printing textbooks or academic books, but it proves that such a thing is possible. There's probably a high cost curve however that will have to come down before these things can become ubiquitous. Cool idea though.
Larry, this is a wonderful idea and I wouldn't be surprised to see it come to fruition. Now ... if we could just get Mr.Ryan a cut...
And gone would be the thousands of returns to the publisher and all those books with ripped off covers tossed into Dumpsters. I like it.
Nice article, Larry. I foresee a lot of changes in the way printed books are handled in the future.
I would love to see what an actual POD book looks like. Great blog post.
They actually look just like any other trade paperback - same binding, same great covers, same paper quality and print styles. And the tech will only get better!
A very well-made case, Larry, and I definitely agree!
I was thinking about how bookstores could reinvent themselves a few weeks ago & I didn't think of the whole POD but that's a great idea. I was thinking they should be a real gathering spot like between a coffee shop and a library. Also have rooms where people could have meetings. And add a few other items in there like movies, games, etc.
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