The internet-as-publisher has, for a long time, been given a bad reputation by the literati and print publishing world. Work published online has been seen as somewhat inferior to work published in print, mostly because it’s labeled as more of a vanity thing. Anybody can start a website or blog and put their work out there. Moreover, anybody can start an online literary journal and distribute the work of others. There’s little oversight, or at least it may be perceived as such, and the quality of both writing and editing is suspect. Print, however, has a long history of authority and quality and is therefore, by inertia alone, the top tier of what any aspiring writer could want.

But if running this blog for what’s coming on a year has taught me anything, it’s that this assumption, which once held validity in the public eye and in my own mind, has become completely false.

True, getting accepted into a respected print journal is an admirable accomplishment and a noble goal. But I’m inclined to think that the more important accomplishment for any writer is obtaining readership. The internet, as compared to a printed journal, offers near unlimited readership. More than that, upon being published online your work is submitted to an easily searchable digital library that will never go away. Being published in print limits you not only to a journal’s regular subscriber base and the booksellers through which they may distribute, but you’re also limited by time. How long before any particular issue of a journal goes out of print forever? Six months? One year? And what of that aforementioned subscriber base, how many people does that really entail? Is it in the thousands or merely in the hundreds? When you publish your work in a print journal, how many people are actually reading your story?

Let’s look at this question from a different perspective: technology. Ten years ago, at the beginning of the new millennium, how many people who you knew had a cell phone or an mp3 player? Ask yourself that same question but apply it to the present time. Do you know anybody right now, apart from maybe a grandparent or two, who doesn’t have these things or some device that does both? Now let’s think about books and technology. The phenomenon of the e-reader has yet to fully take off, but the Amazon Kindle has certainly proved to be a success and Barnes and Noble couldn’t keep up with the demand for their new Nook over the holiday season. As these devices mature, as the technology progresses, as the prices decline, all people who love reading will own an e-reader. It’s not a question of “if” it’s a question of “when.” Trust me, I love the smell of an old book as much as anybody out there; I love digging through the stacks at a used bookstore looking for treasures. Books-as-ephemera is my thing, as I’ve said many times here. But the reality is that era is over. Our lives are infiltrated by all things digital more and more everyday and to deny it, or to cling to the past out of nostalgia or fear or whatever, is simply being a luddite. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating something for the sake of nostalgia, but to deny something wholeheartedly because of nostalgia is akin to sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming “I can’t hear you!”

The truth is, while printed books will always remain for the sake of nostalgia, as collector’s items, as a higher-priced “print!” edition to accompany a digital download, the internet and digital media are unequivocally the future of literature.

I am surprised daily by the amount of traffic this blog receives and it’s enlightening to see which posts garner the most traffic. Even more interesting than that, a number of posts have been viewed by over a thousand people. Each month is better than the last in terms of traffic and as long as the content here is worthwhile to people, that trend won’t subside. The print publishing world is a constant struggle, an uphill battle filled with middlemen and people who all want a piece of the pie. Online, however, you are in charge of everything. There are no page or word limits. It is a true Democracy on the internet, despite it being viewed as a digital Wild West. If you produce quality, people will come. There is no agent or editor determining whether or not your writing is marketable, there is no undergraduate or MFA candidate sussing out the best stories for their university’s journal… there is only the reader. You write for yourself and the reader alone will determine your work’s worth.

I admit, this idea is not yet fully realized but it’s silly to deny that it won’t soon become reality. It’s also silly to think that middlemen will go away; they won’t. Editors are important to cull together a collection, much as a curator does for a gallery exhibit, but publishing and editing and writing will be much more populist in the near future. Agents may have a tougher time in the future, as they will be less necessary (if at all), but if there’s money to be made someone will figure out a way. Ultimately, though, despite the quantity of writing that will be available online, the quality of the work is what will make a writer both prevalent and relevant — not their access to print.

What do you think?

Joe’s recent post filled me with a sense of pathos (bathos?), and not just for what was, but for what might have been.

I’m referring to the brief, two-year run of Cosmo Doogood’s Urban Almanac brought to us by the minds behind The Utne Reader. In 2004 I got the very first edition, and it made for literal hours of engaging reading. Naturally the volume included some very Utneish ooey gooey astrology, but there was also an engrossing discussion of phenology (a sort of armchair naturalism that perfectly blends the love of Mother Earth with cold hard science), a guide to urban dwellers such as pigeons and rats, and essays on “Foraging” and the “Joys of Walking.” The book’s 348 pages were packed with information, and this was what an almanac was always supposed to be.

That last sentence is, perhaps, a slight misstatement. Early almanacs likely didn’t provide farmers with much they didn’t already know, but they did concentrate the information in an immediate and accessible place. Planting schedules, information on seasonal change and the like were interspersed with the sort of pithy editorialism that made Benjamin Franklin famous. He was, in a sense, the inspiration for the 2005 Cosmo Doogood, and while the information it provided was somewhat less crucial to my livelihood than growing times would be to a farmer, the almanac did concentrate useful info in an accessible and engaging format.

Before I got past April, however, I left the book on a bus and lost it forever.

When 2006 rolled around I picked myself out the second issue. Already, something had changed. The astrological commentary, which had only gently intruded into the ‘05 edition, now filled page after page of exercises meant to be synced to the lunar month. Despite this, the almanac itself was thinner, less useful, less helpful. The old cover had been a stark and iciclish Chrysler building rising through a blue sky. The new edition featured a collection of hand-drawn birds perched on a weather vane. Not a bad image, but it couldn’t match the vigorous evocation of the original. It would seem that funds were running short for this project; neither volume sold particularly well, and no Urban Almanac was issued for 2007.

Quite simply, the book was great for a rather limited crowd of people: liberal urban yuppies with an ear for science and a bit of whimsy. But, there it is: even Eric Utne’s name wasn’t able to move enough copies, and this probably derives in part from the fact that said liberal yuppies go hunting for almanacs about as often as farmers go digging through The Utne Reader. For me, the individual fan, there was only one option. I went on Amazon last year and bought a used edition of the original ‘05 edition. I highlighted the more-or-less timeless 75% of the issue. It isn’t as nice as getting a new almanac each year, but it certainly beats the Old Farmers’ Almanacs I’d been buying more recently.

Is there a point to all this?

If there are major changes ahead for the publishing industry due to changing economies and modes of publication, there should be a way to exploit that for opportunities. Perhaps Cosmo Doogood would have fared better as a blog or in another online venue than as a print almanac. Perhaps it could have grown into its own iPhone application. In any event, its stay with us was too brief.

A few of us will even miss it.

So for every glass we raise to great publications that have fallen, let us also remember those we’ve likely never noticed.

Recently, I had a less than desirable corporate style office job. There was nothing particularly wrong about this job, apart from the hours it made me keep, but it really wasn’t the appropriate job for me. The work itself was quite repetitive and computer-related and as such we were afforded the opportunity to listen to our mp3 players if we deigned. Knowing that listening to a handful of albums would not be enough stimulation for me to pass the day in the quickest-seeming fashion, I opted instead to explore the world of audiobooks. I have since moved on to a much more stimulating job and thus haven’t listened to an audiobook in a while. But I have a new-found respect for the audiobook, a format I used to wave off as inferior to the reading experience.

A good friend of mine, we’ll call him Bradner, has been listening to audiobooks for as long as I can remember. Maybe that’s not true. I have a bad memory and I’ve known Bradner for a long time. Let’s say he’s been listening to audiobooks for about five years. Bradner listens to many audiobooks because he is a painter and his favorite stimulation while painting is “reading.” A few years back, he almost converted me when he shared with me some interesting lectures on audiobook. While I did truly enjoy listening to a lecture on all the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, it was just not enough to completely sway me. It may work for Bradner, whose art revolves around meticulously painting lines, but I have nothing comparable to that throughout my day. Audiobooks just weren’t for me.

But this aforementioned office job showed me the light. What had previously frightened me about audiobooks is that many of them are so damned long. We’re talking eight-plus hours of listening to somebody read. I didn’t have that time before to just sit and listen. In corporate America, however, empty time is all you have (all right, maybe not everyone — but I did, at least). I was able to dedicate an entire work day to one audiobook. It worked out perfectly.

I listened primarily to nonfiction style audiobooks; I don’t know why that is. I love fiction best but there is something about listening to somebody read, something radio-like in it, that made me want to hear personal stories or be told facts. It just seemed to fit the medium better. I also loved to hear the audiobook read by the author him or herself. The best example of this was Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. I had been meaning to read this book for some time as I’ve become enamored with Bourdain’s tell-it-like-it-is, devil-may-care attitude. Plus, he’s got the perfect storyteller’s voice. This audiobook was everything I could have hoped for; Bourdain not only concocted a truly interesting tale of life in New York kitchens, but he also read it in such a way that made you feel he was right there with you, shooting the shit. I loved Kitchen Confidential so much, I listened to his follow-up Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal the very next day.

Another great example of listening to the writer read their own work was David Lynch’s inspirational Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Lynch has a very unique voice, a little whiny-cum-nasally, but nonetheless earnest and entertaining. He sounds almost like a curmudgeon who is not a curmudgeon at all. This audiobook, albeit short, was one of my favorites. Essentially it’s about using transcendental meditation to inspire creativity. But it’s more than that. I’m sure Lynch would love for his reader/listener to go out and begin the life of a transcendental meditationist as soon as they finish his book, but I think his goal in writing the book is to show people that it’s extremely important to look deeply inward to attain the highest forms of creativity. Sure, maybe this sounds obvious. But I think if many artists, myself included, really analyzed what they were exploring when they were creating, they would find they were not turning as far inward as they could. Lynch wants to show you that there is much more there and the deep stuff, the biggest fish, are infinitely more fulfilling.

In this great audiobook experiment, I was destined to find something I didn’t like and I found this with Sarah Vowell’s historical nonfiction book about the early American Puritans entitled the Wordy Shipmates. What interested me so much about this audiobook initially was that it was read by multiple people; Vowell narrated most of the book, but whenever there was a direct quote from an historical figure, it was read by someone else. Some of the other readers include Eric Bogosian, Tom McCarthy, Catherine Keener, and Bill Hader. Vowell, known for radio, proved to be just too difficult for me to listen to. The subject matter was interesting, and she tried to make it more interesting by inserting her typical ironic slacker humor, but her voice was far too grating on my ears. Yes, I know she is known for her lisp or whatever speech impediment she has. But I want to listen to someone who can really tell a story. I want Anthony Bourdain, a grizzled former-heroin addict and chain smoker (in spirit, at least; not all audiobook readers should be former-heroin addicts, I admit). I don’t want a lispy hipster doofus. Vowell’s book may be a very entertaining read, and I definitely enjoyed the subject matter at the beginning. But her voice prevented me from really getting into it. I didn’t finish the book.

My experience overall with audiobooks was very positive and very surprising. I know it probably shouldn’t have been surprising, but I so stalwartly avoided them for a long time. I have a new-found appreciation for what can be done with audiobooks, especially when read by a capable narrator, and it has inspired me to want to create an audio appendage to this very blog. Stay tuned for that development, but for the time being give an audiobook a shot; you may just surprise yourself.

To find some awesome audiobooks, you can of course check out Amazon’s audiobook section. But I recommend seeing what Audible has to offer; they have an ever-growing library of digital audiobooks for you to download and it costs very little. Audible is probably the better option if you’re looking to listen to audiobooks on your mp3 player.

A few weeks back I posted an article expressing my interest in the Espresso Book Machine, a contraption that can print library quality books in under five minutes. This thing made me incredibly excited; the EBM offers so much opportunity for both readers and booksellers and I wanted to know more.

My friend Nick Ruest, Digital Strategies Librarian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who I recently interviewed about his library’s Kirtas Scanner, hooked me up with his cohort Mark Lefebvre. Mark is Book Operations Manager at McMaster’s Titles Bookstore. Titles has an Espresso Book Machine and Mark is the resident EBM expert. Who better, then, to answer all the questions floating around in my brain about the EBM?

All photos courtesy of Mark Lefebvre.

BOOKISH US: What is your role at McMaster University? How did your background lead you to this position?

MARK LEFEBVRE: I am the book operations manager at the bookstore, which means I oversee the teams that take care of all aspects of book and book-related merchandise; namely the textbooks, general interest books, and custom published course material offerings (aka Custom Courseware).

I have been in the book industry since 1992 when I started as a part-time seasonal employee at a Coles on Sparks Street in Ottawa.  I quickly caught the “bookselling” bug and have worked as a bookseller since that time, at mall stores, big box stores, for an online bookseller and even as the person responsible for handling book-data feeds from publishers for Chapters/Indigo.

In 2006 I came to Titles Bookstore at McMaster University.  I saw it as a great opportunity to do two things:  Get back into the front line at a bookstore as well as allow me new opportunities to learn and grown, since academic bookselling is quite a bit more complex than the general trade bookselling environment I was most familiar with.

BU: Tell us a little about the Titles Bookstore. Is it just a student textbook store or is there more to it? How is the bookstore involved in university life?

ML: Titles is much more than your average campus textbook store.  Yes, we offer the full services of textbook and custom courseware materials that students need and which you would normally expect from your on campus bookstore.  We also offer a full range of stationery items, particular items students require for their labs and classes, a wide selection of giftware and general merchandise such as McMaster crested clothing, a very large microcomputer store with knowledgeable staff to help with all your hardware and software needs, including computer repair service drop-off, a specialized clinical/medical bookstore, as well as a selection of approximately 40,000 general interest books in our main location on central campus.  We also operate the on campus Post Office (the official Canada Post location at McMaster), we oversee locker rentals for the university, and we provide complimentary caps and gowns at the university’s convocation.

In terms of our General Interest books, with 40,000 titles in stock, prior to the big box retailer Chapters opening up in Hamilton in 1997, Titles was by far the largest general bookstore in the Hamilton/Burlington area.  (Your average sized bookstore usually stocks between 10,000 and 12,000 titles)

Titles bookstore is not just an on campus retailer, but we are an ancillary operation of the university.  Apart from the administrative and operations fees and rents that we pay to the university for various in house services and departments, we also give $750,000 per year to the university which go towards supporting student services.  $250,000 of those funds are channeled specifically into a scholarship funding program.

And of course, on top of the financial remuneration we offer that contributes to the quality of student life on campus, our bookstore, like most independent community bookstores, offers a cultural meeting place of minds.  We hold various author readings and book signings allowing folks on campus as well as in the local community a place to gather and celebrate literary achievements and exchange ideas.

BU: Let’s talk about the Espresso Book Machine at Titles Bookstore. How did this project come about and who is behind it?

ML: Managing textbooks has certainly changed, even just in the past ten years.  It used to be that we could follow our original mandate of “one book for every student” — however, the rising costs of textbooks and alternative models of behavior in students resulting in them not buying a book (by either getting a copy from the library, sharing with friends, other illegal methods of obtaining the materials or perhaps deciding to not obtain or use the textbook at all) means that we often ship in a skid of textbooks only to ship about half of them back a few months later.

This ongoing shipping back and forth of books, which is an industry standard and has been for a long time, is not cost effective.  It costs bookstores and publishers a great deal of time and effort.  The margin that bookstores make on textbooks and academic materials is typically only 20%.  Meaning that if a textbook retails for $100, the bookstore is paying $80 for it.  Somewhere in the 20% margin the bookstore also has to pay for shipping and handling as well as staff who are ordering, receiving and shelving the books.  Once it’s all said and done, a bookstore would be lucky if they are clearing 50 cents on that $100 textbook once all the bills and expenses are paid.

Our colleagues at the University of Alberta bookstore purchased an EBM, and we saw how they were able to create a new model of bookselling — one that reduces that back and forth timely and costly nature.  Of course, for our friends in Alberta, their shipping time and costs were dramatically worse, given that most publisher warehouses are in the Toronto area — so the benefits to them were even more obvious.

While we’re only about an hour away from most of the domestic warehouses in Canada, there is still a benefit to the supply chain model to NOT have to ship those books to the store, and to NOT have to return them.

So, while obtaining digital files of the textbooks with direct agreements from the publishers is one manner in which the EBM is being used, we are also benefiting from being able to offer small publishers and authors the opportunity to take advantage of amazingly low costs on short print runs.  Traditionally, to self-publish a book, you’d have to print upwards of 500 to 1000 copies to get a decent price.  With our EBM and the beauty of the POD model, the minimum print quantity to get a good price is a single copy.

Donna Shapiro, our bookstore director and myself spent a good deal of time investigating the EBM for our own business needs as well as a manner of creating a whole new revenue stream for the bookstore.  After some significant research, I developed a two year business plan for the EBM and we presented that to the VP of our department.

Since the EBM landed in November 2008 we have barely been able to catch our breath as new and exciting opportunities continue to come in to the store from folks interested in taking advantage of the services we can offer with the EBM.  That being said, we have barely begun to tap into the potential that this machine and technology will allow us in terms of our ability to special order POD books faster than any other method currently available in the market.

BU: What are the EBM’s specifications? How does it work? What hardware and software does it run on?

ML: This is a bit of a tricky question for me to answer because the EBM is continually evolving.  We have an EBM 1.5, and even at that our version of the 1.5 is significantly different from the 1.5 that the University of Alberta bookstore purchased a year earlier.  The reason is that with each new machine that was custom built for each client, the technicians and manufacturer were able to revise and fine-tune the specifications.  What they have ultimately ended up with is an EBM 2.0 that is even smaller, more efficiently designed and compact than ever.  And it’s very likely that this 2.0 and the slight modifications they will continue to make on this product (of which there are still less than a dozen of in the world) will allow it to continually evolve and expand (Click here for current specs on the 2.0).

So, that being said, the 1.5 EBM that we have at McMaster uses a Xerox 4112 for the black and white printing and a Minolta magicolor 7450 for the color covers.

The software that runs the machine was custom designed by a software technician at On Demand Books and runs on a Mac Mini computer.  We currently utilize a web browser pointing to a local directory on the computer to access our custom catalog of titles.  Using a secure login from other computers within our store’s network, our booksellers can access the catalog through their web browsers and add orders from the catalog into a que that is managed by the EBM operator.

One really nice feature is that the operator can modify books in the que in order to give priority to different print jobs.  IE, they might already have a stack of 50 copies of a particular title that needs to be printed for the next day and that they are working on — however, if a customer comes in and requests a special order from the EBM catalog, the operator can move their order to be the next book printed, ensuring the least amount of wait time for that customer.

Here is a high level look at how the EBM 1.5 works.  It basically takes two pdf files: One for the book’s interior (or “book block”) and the other for the cover which, when loaded to the EBM catalog, are run through a custom script that prepares them for the printing, binding and trimming process that each book goes through.

When the EBM operator presses the print button, the black and white printer produces the book block on 8.5″ X 11 ” pages and the color printer produces the cover on an 11″ X 17″ cover stock sheet.

The book block is collected at the far end of the machine while the book cover waits on the binding table.  When both files are ready for the next step, the operator begins the binding process, which drops the book block into a carriage which runs over a blade that disturbs the fibers on the edge of the spine, then over the glue pot which applies a thin layer of glue, and then onto the binding table where the cover is bound to the book block.  From there the bound book moves into the trimmer where it is spun around and the excess paper is trimmed from three sides using a hydraulic powered carbide blade.

In a nutshell it’s a three click process.  One click to select a title from the catalog, one click to begin the printing process and a third click to begin the binding process.

Our version of the EBM allows us the ability to print various trim sizes — from just under 8.5″ X 11″ to as small as 4.5″ X 4.5″

We can print books as low as 40 pages to as many as 550 pages.

The average speed of a 300 page book from the beginning of the print cycle to the final trim cut is somewhere in the realm of 3 to 4 minutes.

BU: From the video I’ve seen, operation appears very seamless and easy but are there any difficulties in operating the EBM? Does it fall victim to unexpected clogs? How quickly do ink cartridges or glue cartridges run dry? How is paper stored and how much does the EBM hold?

I think one of the best ways for me to answer this is to remind you that the interior book block printer on our particular model is a Xerox 4112.  So, anyone who is familiar with this particular model (or other high-end multi-purpose print and copy machines) would be familiar with the through-put

We have printed over 3000 books and changed the black and white ink toner twice since November 2008.  So we’re making approximately 1500 books on a single toner.

We have also had to replace the toner cleaner cartridge, drum cartridge and other similar standard items — no different than you would experience using a high-end office laser printer.

The colour covers are printed on the Minolta and we have only had to replace the full set of ink cartridges on that once so far.

BU: How are Titles Bookstore and the University Library connected? Is there any connection with the Titles Bookstore’s EBM and the Library’s Kirtas Scanner?

ML: Titles and the University Library are following similar purposes of being there to serve the academic mission of McMaster.  The on campus EBM and Kirtas partnership is one of the first times since I have been at McMaster that the bookstore and library have worked so closely on a particular project.  A collaboration like that can only benefit students, faculty and the greater campus community.

Because the EBM can take pdf files and print them and the library can use the Kirtas Scanner to create digital versions of the over 100,000 public domain titles currently existing in the Mills Library archives, this partnership is perfect and one that other campuses I deal with that have an EBM but don’t have a Kirtas Scanner are envious of.

Any of these public domain titles which were created to be distributed for free in the Library’s “digital commons” can be made available in the McMaster University Library Imprint — with a specific look and feel, and some complex “templates” that were created, customers can request trade paperback copies of these public domain titles.  We call them the replica versions of the original texts.

The first one we made available for sale was a signed first edition of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE.  Retailing for $15.99, customers have loved the fact that they could purchase a replica of this rare and extremely expensive edition for less than $20.

For Christmas 2008, we also had one of the first editions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL available for sale in the McMaster University Library imprint.  And even though we had also produced a very thin “no frills” public domain EBM version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL for $2.50, every single customer who purchased that story sought out the more expensive replica version.

We have done the same thing for other special occasions.  Classic “love” themed books for Valentines Day.  Classic replicas of Darwin’s works, spooky Halloween stories.

The beautiful thing about this partnership is that we are not only able to use the McMaster University Library imprint as a way of raising funds for the library (a portion of the sales of each of these books is paid over to the library through an internal transfer), but customers get to walk away with beautiful replica versions of timeless classics — and, in many cases, they got to watch the book they purchased being printed in front of them and hold the book, still warm, seconds after it comes out of the machine.

BU: How large is the titles list for the EBM and where do these digital titles come from? Could a student come in and print their thesis on the EBM? Similarly, could someone come in and print something they did not hold the copyright? What are the copyright issues involved with the EBM?

ML: The current list of available titles is not huge, though aggressive plans and beta-projects are in the works to offer EBM owners access to an incredible huge selection of titles through a custom virtual network called EspressNet.  The first round of offerings will likely be just under 100,000 titles.  Ultimately, that list can grow exponentially as more and more publishers sign deals with On Demand Books.

Currently, we have about 130 titles in our own internal database of EBM titles.  They are all files that we have manually created at the bookstore at McMaster and are either files created on campus (by the bookstore or library), or were files provided to us by authors or publishers.

Copyright is something we take extremely seriously.  Titles is licensed by Access Copyright and for over two decades now we have created course packs in which copyright clearances are all fully secured.  Printing books on the EBM is no different.  We take every effort to ensure that the creative copyright owners are paid for use of their work.

Yes, while we have welcomed students coming in to request that we print their thesis as a trade paperback, we have to continually remind people that we can only print works that are either in the public domain or for which the person requesting the work owns the copyright — ie, if you are the author or copyright owner of the work, then we can print it for you.  If you are not, then copyright clearance must first be secured before printing or even beginning to create a file for printing will begin.

For course adoptions where a faculty member has requested a book that is either out of print or in print, we have contacted them as the copyright owner and secured a contract and pre-determined fee schedule for copyright payment before we have printed the book.  In the Winter term of 2008/2009, we had 5 different textbooks printed on the EBM for 4 different courses.

The work involved in securing copyright permission to print a book is quite intense and something we reserve most of our time and energy for if it is an item required for use in a course being taught here at McMaster.

BU: The OnDemandBooks website advertises that the books the EBM prints are “library quality” paperbacks. Is it really archival quality? Does it depend on the paper/ink/glue used? Is the EBM really the future of printing books?

ML: Before we brought the machine in to Titles, I had visited the University of Alberta bookstore to check out their machine.  When I returned, I brought with me a book that had been printed on their EBM (a slightly earlier version of the 1.5 EBM that we now own).  When I put this book in a pile with about half a dozen other books that had all been purchased from publishers and printed via the traditional method, only 1 in 10 seasoned booksellers properly guessed which book had been printed on the EBM.

The average person is likely not able to tell the difference.  At the end of the day, if you look hard enough, you might detect a difference.  And yes, it does depend on the paper, ink and glue being used.

The EBM offers an incredibly good quality book in an incredibly convenient and unique fashion.  If it isn’t the future of printing special order books locally, it’s certainly a part of it.

BU: Personally, I am interested in the opportunity the EBM provides for the small independent press though I assume the cost of the machine is a bit restrictive presently. How do the costs per book compare between printing on the EBM and printing through a traditional printing press? Do you see the EBM, now or in the future, as a way for an independent press to print its publications or is the system and cost more geared toward consumer level point-of-sale distribution?

ML: I don’t actually see the EBM as being for small presses so much as being for a bookstore or place where people expect to find books. Given the manner in which it works, I wouldn’t think of it as being appropriate for a full-scale production press, but rather for one-off special requests.

Cost-wise, printing a book on the EBM is significantly cheaper than what you’d get using a traditional printer.  However, that’s for one-offs or extremely short print-runs.  Labour and time-wise, it’s a lot more cost effective to use a traditional printing press to do larger print runs.  What I haven’t landed on is, for the labour cost savings and for the per page costs, what is that properly defined sweet spot in terms of print run.  Is it 500?  Is it 700?  Something higher, something less?

So, as your question suggests, I see the EBM as more geared towards consumer level point-of-sale distribution.  For that, it’s perfectly ideal.

BU: What do you see for the future of the EBM, it’s role at Titles Bookstore, and it’s role at McMaster University? What are your predictions as the technology matures?

ML: I think that the EBM or a very similar product like it, is going to become the norm in many library and bookstore operations.  The fact is that people demand more and more choice, and providing more and more books with the limited space and money that most bookstores and libraries are operating with isn’t an easy thing to provide.

But having an EBM in the corner is certainly a way that a small town library or an independent local bookstore could actually conceive of being able to compete with the Amazons of the world.  Sure, you could go to Amazon and have a book shipped to you within 24 hours — but if you walk over to your local corner bookstore perhaps they could print that same book for you and you’d have it in your hands within about 15 minutes.

And while a really great search engine online and an automated “if you like this you might like that” optimization is a great tool for online browsing, one thing that I truly believe technology will not be able to replace is the friendly, knowledgeable and experienced booksellers that you encounter in your local neighborhood book shop.  Book stores, as I mentioned earlier, are not merely repositories to pick up books in — they are cultural meeting places, offering up serendipitous experiences of browsing and discovery.  They provide an atmosphere or learning, exploration and sharing knowledge and wonder.  Technology like the EBM and being able to produce books on demand will certainly add new layers to that culture and apply a whole new sense of wonder to the bookstore experience.

Last weekend I read a book review in the New York Times by Michiko Kakutani, the Times’ perennial taste-maker, entitled “Taking Sides in the Digital Revolution, Where Copyright is the First Casualty.” The article outlines two recent books, one called “Ripped” by Greg Kot and the other “Digital Barbarism” by Mark Helprin. Essentially Kakutani says both books, one pro and one con, present their arguments well but both fall short because they fail to adequately analyze the counterarguments. I am not here to comment much on the review itself, nor do I care to read or address either book. These books both seem as though their purpose is to convince fencesitting audiences. I do not sit on the fence when it comes to digital media distribution, either the legal kind or the sort labeled by the uninitiated as “piracy.” As an unabashed technophile, I see the future of media distribution encapsulated in what media piracy offers: all media available in high-quality formats, downloadable at fast speeds any time of day, anything you could possibly want. Think of it as a library at your fingertips, currently only available to those in the know, those who have some tech savvy, and those who are willing to cross that line into what the law, albeit a dark shade of gray, labels illegal. But very soon, I predict, this will be the way most, if not all, media will be distributed.

About five years ago I received an invitation to the private BitTorrent music site called Oink. If you’re unfamiliar with BitTorrent, let me break it down for you. You download a client software to your computer, which is able to read and parse Torrents, and connect to BitTorrent trackers hosted on websites. No actual media is hosted on these websites, they only serve as a directory to Torrent files; Torrent files are small and serve only to connect users to each other and provide an organizational map for media data. When you upload a Torrent file to one of these sites, you are registering media hosted on your own computer with the website and opening that media up to other users to download. When a Torrent originates, hosted only by the original uploader, other users attach onto the file and are called Leeches. At first the downloading is slow, capable of only going as fast as the original uploaders upload speed. But when the Torrent is completed, once another user has fully downloaded the files, these completed downloads/users join the Swarm, the people sharing a Torrent and set of files. The more people in the Swarm, the faster a Leech’s potential download. Perhaps at first you may only download at 50KB per second but as more users complete the Torrent and share, joining the Swarm, you become only limited by your own download speed. You could be downloading at 1MB per second on a normal residential internet connection (thus getting a 60MB music album in one minute), or even faster if you’re on a university or business connection. It all depends on what people colloquially call your “pipe.”

Oink, in time, became the preeminent music download site among Torrenters; it ushered in this strange new era of sharing, with an effect greater than Napster because you could get absolutely anything, in complete albums, in any format you wanted. But, like Napster, it was shut down when it became too big. Without missing a beat, however, the Torrent community had new sites up within a week (which will remain unnamed in this article), staying true to what is known as the Hydra. A hydra has many heads, and when you chop one off more will grow in its place. The Torrent community cannot be stopped; you can’t shut down all the sites. Just as the recent judgment against the founders of the Pirate Bay reveals, you can persecute the people but you can’t stop the machine. These sites don’t just contain music. All digital media can be had if you get into the right site. Books are certainly included in this, both of the e-book and audiobook variety.

I thought this was an important topic to bring up because I myself hope to one day make a living from my art. But, despite what my friends may tell you, I am not a fool. With the way the current industries operate, music and book, and with the ease at which someone can “pirate” this media, the financial models these industries purport are simply not sustainable. Just as the iPod ushered piracy into the mainstream (can anyone claim they have paid for every single mp3 on their digital music player?), e-readers like the Kindle will do the very same thing to books. Why pay $25-30 for a book when you can have the text for free? In the New York Times’ Book Review podcast from 5/15/09, they discuss book piracy and how it effects authors and the industry and such. But these people talking about it, Motoko Rich and Sam Tanenhaus, come off as luddites (though they are just journalists, so we’ll cut them some slack). They speak of transcription as a form of book piracy, as in someone will sit and type a book out that they own so that they may distribute it on the internet. This idea is small potatoes; maybe a few will do this, but how many people do you think will actually spend their time transcribing a book?

More likely, e-reader proprietary formats will be cracked (do you think Amazon’s techs are smarter than millions of internet nerds?) and distributed through various Peer-to-Peer (P2P) sharing avenues on the internet, including BitTorrent. This is already the case. At my fingertips is almost any book I could want, in PDF for text or mp3 for audiobook. Now, if you’ve read some of my articles here before you’ll know that I don’t want to ever give up the paperback. I love the feel of a book in my hands. I love reading paper. And it is my opinion that, in this regard, music and book piracy differ. But I could, one day in the not too distant future, be in the minority. Many people love the Kindle. Just like the iPod, there’s a hefty upfront cost but if you know how to get your media for free, the $300 is worth it.

What does all this add up to? The industry can’t stop it. It is a fool’s errand to fight it. We are entering a new age and if the industry wants to stay lucrative, they need to adapt. Instead of suing people who share media, they need to hire a few and come up with a new distribution model. But I don’t see the big companies surviving, ultimately; their product will become too manufactured someday soon. They play it safe, create pop stars with little substance, and try to milk every dollar they can from a wilting turnip. Artists, both musicians and writers, need to realize this and figure out their own way. The days of the giant advance and massive royalties are over. What we’re learning is that it can’t just be about the money because the money no longer exists.

Once you release your art, your media, it is gone. Anyone can have it for free. I talked to my friend Scott Masson of the band Office about the subject. “I don’t want to spend my life and career fighting something that actually allows my own music to be heard,” he said. “Better that, than folks not hearing a piece of music at all.”

Masson has found success with Office, has bounced on and off of a major label, and has ultimately found it more fulfilling and lucrative to remain independent. His latest release, Mecca, is offered for free on Office’s website. “I worked my ass off on this album too, and spent a lot of money and time crafting it.  All I wanted was to share it because I believed in the contents.”

“The companies used to be in control of the artists, and now I sort of feel the public is in control,” said Masson. “The public will make the final decision on how an artist makes their living.”

I don’t think it’s become a question of morals, like some pundits argue. I don’t think labeling media sharing as “piracy” is very accurate. It is a new model. I’m not arguing that artists shouldn’t be compensated; they most certainly should be able to make a living from their work, so long as their work has greater cultural value. But, as Masson points out, the people will decide this. Morals are out of the picture. If you offer mp3s of your favorite new album to a friend, to a family member, to a stranger, will any of them decline this offering? “No,” your upstanding friend says. “I do not accept any music for which I did not pay.” Yeah, right. It will soon be the same way with books.

I don’t have the answers for the future of commercial media, I don’t pretend to know what the new model will be. But at least I’m thinking about the question. If major companies want to stay afloat they need to harness this new power of media distribution instead of trying to squash it with their heel. Artists will need to rely on the quality of their work, rather than a PR machine pushing it. This is bad news for the people who rely on the exploitation of artists to earn a living. But for artists, I think this is a wake-up call. With the fall of intellectual property rights, the ease at which anybody can download anything they want for free, the onus is on the artists to create something truly magical and culturally significant if they want to be relevant.