FedEx bought Kinko’s several years ago and ever since then they’ve been pushing more and more to support the mobile office works. For some time now they’ve let you create print jobs from their website which you could then pick up in store. And now they’ve added the option of printing your docs from a number of cloud storage services.

FedEx’s website will now let you log in to your accounts at Box, Google Docs, and Dropbox so you can select the docs to print. FedEx then transfers the files, generates a print order, and lets you carry out the print job from there.

And if you’re on the go but don’t have an account with any of the services, FedEx will also let you print to its stores via Google Cloud Print, HP ePrint or Breezy, a third part printing app.

via

Penguin announced that they’ve picked a POD service for their backlist. Quad/Graphics, a Wisconsin based printer, will be using their print-on-demand and short production run experience to provide a minimal inventory for Penguin. The deal covers all Penguin  imprints in trade, paperback, and hardcover print runs.

Doug Whiteman, Penguin Group (USA)’s EVP of Business Operations, said: “In recent years, we have taken steps to address the area of excess inventory and its resulting impact on the value chain. This new agreement with Quad allows us to take another significant step in that process while also providing our customers greater access to more titles.” According Joel Quadracci, Quad/Graphics chairman, president and CEO, Quad/Graphics’ “ability to work together with Penguin makes us partners in innovation that redefines how many books will be ordered, produced and distributed in the future.”

image by takomabibelot

On Demand Books announced today that it had signed a deal with Google to tie the more than 7 million titles available via the Espresso Book Machine into Google Books. Customers will soon be able to find books on the Google Books website and (where avaialble) buy the book and have it printed at the nearest Espresso Book Machine.

“We are pleased to announce this latest milestone for our network,” said Dane Neller , CEO of On Demand Books. “Our existing relationship with Google enables over 2 million public-domain titles to be purchased on Google Books. By registering our entire catalogue of over 7 million titles with Google Merchant Center, all of our content, including in-copyright and publisher titles, will soon be available for discovery and purchase on Google Books and through other Google e-commerce services.”

On Demand Books has been steadily adding publishers since the first EBM shipped a few years ago. Current publishers include Random House, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, WW Norton, Macmillan, and many others.

HarperCollins announced today that it was planning to start distributing its backlist catalog through On Demand Books. Around 5 thousand titles will be part of the “Comprehensive Backlist” program when it launches, and readers will be able to buy one of these titles at any bookstore that has an Espresso Book Machine.

The EBM is a rather large all-in-one book printing solution that was developed by On Demand Books. Bookstores can buy or rent one and then sell to the public any of the thousands books listed in the catalog. The bookstores will have to pay a royalty to the copyright holder for each copy, but they can price the book however they wish.

Read more

Dymocks announced this week that it is about to get into the publishing business.

Later this year it will be launching D Publishing, a new self-pub platform that will offer full editing, design, production, and printing services to small publishers and the self-published. D Publishing will be a web-based operation, but other than that I don’t have many details to share. Prices, fees, and other costs haven’t been set yet.

The goal of the new imprint is to create publishable books and possibly distribute them through Dymocks. There’s no mention of eBooks, but I imagine they will be included as well.

It sounds like it’s going to be something more than your usual POD but less than a complete publishing house, and I suspect that Dymocks will hold back on this in order to avoid angering its major publishing partners.

Pan Macmillan has launched a new publishing imprint to revive backlist titles as eBooks and print-on-demand. It’s going to be called Macmillan Compass, and it’s currently negotiating with agents, authors, and literary estates.

Jeremy Trevathan, who will head up the new imprint along with Sara Lloyd, said: “We’re already in conversation with a number of agents who, like us, are very excited by this new project. We believe we are the right partner for agents because in addition to our proven digital skills, we will bring all the attributes and reputation of the Macmillan brand to tailored marketing and social media campaigns, print and online publicity and direct-to-consumer e-commerce.”

Pan Macmillan is the UK branch of Macmillan publishing conglomerate. It’s currently releasing books under 8(?) imprints, and at the end of 2009 it was the 5th largest publisher in the UK.

via The Bookseller

The Espresso Book Machine is the latest and greatest tech toy for automated book printing.  Have you ever wanted to see one?

Well, here’s your chance. Yesterday I came across a list maintained by On Demand Books. It shows all of the eBMs that have been installed around the world, and it shows where they are.

Unless I can come up with a reason to drive 264 miles to Pittsburgh, Penn, or 238 miles to Raleigh, N.C., I doubt that I will ever see an EBM. I’m going to have to be happy with watching the video which is embedded after the break.

Read more

Amazon announced today that it was launching a new Print-on-Demand (POD)  service in Japan.

With this new service, a customer can order one of around 600,000 titles that otherwise would be out of stock and Amazon will be able to rapidly print and ship that book. Titles in the program will always be in-stock, allowing customers to benefit from Amazon’s shipping offers such as Amazon Prime and Same Day Delivery. Publishers from around the world are working with Amazon to offer their titles via its POD service, including Cambridge University Press, Macmillan, British Library, Taylor & Francis and Springer.

Amazon would like you to think that customers in Japan  had limited options before, but that’s not completely true. There is at least 1 site that has a worldwide reputation, and it ships for free: BookDepository. I wonder how the prices will compare? There are a number of markets where its prices give it a competitive advantage.

The technical publisher O’Reilly Media announced yesterday that it was abandoning traditional publishing methods and will soon start printing copies of its books as needed. The POD service will be handled by Ingram Content Group, the same company that has been handling O’Reilly’s print on demand needs for some time. Around 200 O’Reilly titles are already in the POD program, and more titles will be added as time goes on.

“Working with Ingram, we are one step closer to our vision of always available, always relevant, and always in stock,” said Laura Baldwin, president, O’Reilly Media. “With the enormous change we are experiencing in the industry, the traditional models of publishing no longer make financial sense. To be able to grow our publishing program while at the same time lowering our costs is a huge leap forward.”

image by acaben

Xerox has reached an agreement with On Demand Books, the company behind the Espresso Book Machine, reports Publishers Weekly. You can check out the PW article for more on the tech specs, but this essentially means that On Demand will now have the considerable resources of Xerox at its disposal, in terms of a sales force and a trusted name in the business of copying things fast. Through this agreement, the Espresso Book Machine (which, you’ll recall, is an in-store device that spits out a speedy hard copy of a digital copy of a book in a few minutes).

Here’s more from PW: “By partnering with Xerox, On Demand will have access to a sales force for the first time and will make joint sales calls with Xerox, which will forward leads. ‘It’s been a long journey,’ said Xerox publishing v-p John Conley, formerly with R.R. Donnelley, who has been in discussions with On Demand for a number of months. For him, the driver behind Xerox’s decision is that there is now enough content, some 3.3 million titles, to make EBM work. ‘On Demand does many things we can’t do,’ he said, citing the EBM’s finisher and the EspressNet software. ‘But we have many, many skills that can make them more robust as you set a goal for worldwide capability. We think we can help make this incredibly significant. We like what it can do for the book distribution model.”

There are only 21 stores and libraries that currently have the machines, but through this agreement, you can bet you’ll see more of them–On Demand hopes to get 80 machines in the world by the end of 2011. Check out the video above to see how the Espresso Book Machine Works.