My idea is a website that you could type in the nameof a book and it would be printed of taking money out of your bank account and save you going to the shop.-- gizmo, Oct 21 2002 Michigan eLibrary http://www.michigan...29-15490---,00.htmlPeriodicals, newspapers and 10,000 books online. (Assuming 10,000 books qualifies as enough.) [hollajam, Oct 21 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Roving Print On Demand http://webdev.archi...exts/bookmobile.php22 Oct 02 | "In a celebration of the Public Domain, starting September 30, 2002, the Internet Archive's Bookmobile will be coming to a town near you, bringing with it the ability to access, download, and print one of the almost 20,000 public domain books currently available online." [bristolz, Oct 22 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Salon's Take on the Bookmobile http://www.salon.co...2/10/09/bookmobile/22 Oct 02 | "Woohoo! We're making books!" [bristolz, Oct 22 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/Lots of older books, available free [krelnik, Oct 22 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004] University of Virginia Library Library E Text Center http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/About six years ago, I bought a Great Minds library CD-ROM that this org appropriated. [1kester, Oct 04 2004] Both baked AND incomprehensible.-- ldischler, Oct 21 2002 I'd pick one or the other, Idischler. If you cannot understand then you are in no position to judge.
gizmo: Some clarification? Would you print these books yourself? Would they be copy protected, if so how? Is is just a printable ebook or am I missing something?-- st3f, Oct 21 2002 Both baked AND incomprehensible.-- hollajam, Oct 21 2002 Its a rare breed. It could mean one of many things, all of them baked.-- ldischler, Oct 21 2002 welcome back gizmo, this sounds great if you don't care much for the look of the book and have the time to put it together after printing. hey I love bookshops though.-- po, Oct 21 2002 I’ve used books-on-demand a few times. The market heretofore seems to be for obscure titles and vanity publishing. Too expensive otherwise, unless, as [Rods Tiger] suggests, you have special format requirements. Maybe you want leather, a certain size, or maybe you want your name as author. It would be a simple matter also, to makeup your own short story collections, or to blue-pencil or otherwise edit a book to your satisfaction. I’d like to water down some of the Commandments, for instance.-- ldischler, Oct 21 2002 [gizmo]! Blended with the print-on-demand scheme [Rods] talks about, it would be convenient. I wonder if it would save paper over the current practice of large print runs of books that may or may not be purchased.
I'd like this better, and it seems more suitable, if you could also just print-on-demand and pay for it a chapter at a time, especially with reference material where just one or two specific chapters of a given work might be all I need or want.-- bristolz, Oct 21 2002 You made me think twice about it bristolz...
//pay for it a chapter at a time, especially with reference material... //
At one time there was an organization devoted to transferring *all* published work to electronic format. If I recall correctly they were proceeding without regard to copyright but weren't yet in the business of providing access to the book files.
Details are still lacking in this idea's description though leaving the it pretty close to what is already out there.-- hollajam, Oct 21 2002 <background> poor lad is limited to an hour at the library - lets hear it for gizmo.-- po, Oct 21 2002 //to transferring *all* published work to electronic format//
hj, I think you might be referring to Project Gutenberg, see link. They don't actually transfer all work, as there would be copyright issues there. They focus on things for which the copyright has expired (public domain).-- krelnik, Oct 22 2002 Hiya [gizmo]. Nice to see you back. How's [gizmo_mum]?-- phoenix, Oct 23 2002 Project Gutenbers is the most excellent of all .txt book sites and The U of Virginia E-Text Center [link] has a great database (but is has student-only sections)..-- 1kester, Nov 26 2002 Oh yeah, the "print on demand" idea is becoming old-fashioned, as many meduim to high-end PDAs come with PDF-readers and many textbook manufactureres are making CD versions of their textbooks--often in pdf format. I envision that in a few years, students will download assignments and readings onto their PDAs (Of course, Universities will start brokering deals with Palm and Mindspring, just as they do with Dell, Gateway, Apple, Pepsi, Coke, etc.).-- 1kester, Nov 26 2002 The only problem with print on demand is the cost. If you factor in wear & tear, ink , and paper for your average inkjet printer, printing one page costs around 5 cents. A 300 page book would cost you $15.00 just for the printing costs. Factor in whatever you paid for the download, and you might as well have bought the hardback edition at the bookstore.-- MrSheep, Nov 26 2002 random, halfbakery