Technology

NEWS WATCH; A High-Tech Rescue For Out-of-Print Books

By Katie Hafner
Published: June 04, 1998

At the Book Expo America show in Chicago this week, the most popular attraction by far was a new technology for on-demand book printing. Lightning Print, a division of Ingram, a book wholesaler, hauled its entire operation to Chicago to demonstrate the new process, which uses state-of-the-art I.B.M. printing equipment and software.

When a title goes out of print or demand for a book falls so low that publishers hesitate to reprint it, in steps Lightning. ''Books really never have to go out of print again,'' said Larry Brewster, Lightning Print's general manager. ''For $100 to $150, you set the book up in the digital library, and books can be printed as booksellers order them.'' A 300-page book costs about $5 to print after the initial setup, he said.

Once Ingram receives an order for even one book from a bookseller, Lightning prints the book at the Ingram headquarters in La Vergne, Tenn., and ships it to one of three major distribution centers.

A 300-page book takes about 30 seconds to print, and the books don't have to be printed in batches. Out comes Freeman Dyson's ''Disturbing the Universe'' one minute, and ''The Collected Stories of Phillip K. Dick'' the next.

The books are expected to sell for $15 to $20 apiece, Mr. Brewster said.

At the book show, people were taken with the quality of the books, especially the covers. ''Unless you were in the production business, you'd have a very difficult time telling the difference between these covers and offset printing,'' Mr. Brewster said.

For now, the Lightning system prints only paperbacks, but Mr. Brewster said the company hoped to offer hardcover editions as well by the end of the year.

Lightning recently finished a pilot project with 150 titles from three dozen United States publishers, like Random House and Princeton University Press.

The company plans to have 10,000 titles in its digital library by the end of the year.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/04/technology/news-watch-a-high-tech-rescue-for-out-of-print-books.html?src=pm
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