PrintOnDemand
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You're the Pundit: Could Apple introduce iBooks Author print-on-demand?
When it comes to evaluating the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is print-on-demand. Everybody's doing it. Amazon does it. Lulu does it. Even Apple does it -- so long as what you're printing is a photo book. So why haven't we heard a peep about iBooks Author (iBA) print-on-demand? Wouldn't it be nearly as easy to produce an iBA project as a photo one? So what's the hold up? We think that iBooks Author offers a perfect opportunity for Apple to extend its already excellent POD services to a new group of customers. They could easily extend their current meant-for-iBooks templates to a variety of more printer-friendly options. Sure they'd have to change the pricing model, add more pages, allow black & white printing, and implement other changes that reflected the difference between heirloom photo collections and a standard print book. We get that, along with the big set-up overhead that would be involved. But think of how awesome it might be. So why have we heard not a whispered rumor? Is this a no-go area for Apple? You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your analysis. %Poll-75111%
Blurb and CGX partner for print-on-demand workflow
Ebooks are the current darlings of the publishing world, but there is still a huge demand for printed materials. Blurb, an online platform for designing, publishing, marketing, and selling pro-quality books, has partnered with commercial printing firm Consolidated Graphics, Inc (CGX) to produce an Adobe InDesign plug-in that works with a new service called Publish to allow print-on-demand books in runs as small as one. Publish lets designers use their familiar friend Adobe InDesign to prepare their projects. The plug-in has templates for four cover formats, five paper types, and eight trim sizes. The plug-in then moves projects to Blurb, where they can be proofed, given automated pre-flight checks, and then ordered via credit card. Blurb notes that the workflow speeds project completion times by about 75 percent. The small run size provided by Publish makes it cost-effective for companies to create high-quality projects and receive completed print materials in about a week.
