Bringing “On Demand” Another Step Forward for Publishing

The recent news about Xerox partnering with On Demand Books so that self-published pieces and public titles that are no longer available in the stores can be printed “on demand” via the Espresso Book Machine kiosk is very exciting. We’ve certainly come a step forward in our thinking (and technologies) if you can stroll over to a kiosk, search for the title of a book and push the print button to secure your own bound copy!

But wait, why aren’t we bringing this concept even another step forward? If we have the data, why aren’t we letting the consumer walk up to the kiosk and select specific chapters to combine and print. You might think that’s a silly idea but in the world of textbooks and offering a unique curriculum, this might be the perfect way to offer a well-rounded course of study.

On Demand Should Include Personalization

Imagine, you walk up to the kiosk, refer to your syllabus and select chapter 3 from one textbook, chapters 6 and 7 from another textbook and so on. Once you’ve selected all the chapters you need to fulfill the reading and study outline for your course, you hit the print button and voila, a custom textbook is printed for you. Perhaps the syllabus also includes supplementary materials like industry reports and/or expert articles that can be selected and printed as an appendix. I’m pretty sure that McGraw Hill’s Higher Education division offers something like this already but, the textbooks are pre-designed by the professor so it’s already “assembled” per se once the student gets to the kiosk or online order form. There doesn’t seem to be any personalization element for the student.

Is it a Leap of Faith or Just a Matter of Rolling up Our Sleeves and Getting it Done?

Perhaps publishers are toying with this idea today but just haven’t taken the full leap of faith. If you have the materials already in a digital format, have the content in a repository, or have access to the materials via the web, this can indeed be done today.

And when the student pushes the order button, why do we have to print the book? Let’s push it to their Netbook, their Kindle or the soon to be available, iPad.

Perhaps this is something you’d like to build? To offer to universities? Let us help you explore the possibility.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 11:36 am and is filed under General, Intelligent Agent Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.