While I’ve written with enthusiasm about Amazon’s Kindle (here) and about ways to digitize books to feed to your digital book reader (here), Jason Epstein, co-founder of On Demand Books, thinks this is not the future of books. In a Technology Review article he points out the Kindle’s flaws. First of all, it is very expensive. Your first book will cost you $400 (price of Kindle) + $10 (price of downloaded book) = $410. He also argues that imitating the real thing by creating paper-like displays misses the point. Why not print the real thing? On Demand Books intends to deploy ATM-like devices that’ll allow you to do just that: print a copy of a book from an electronic file at the point of sale.

I understand where Epstein is coming from. I just recently finished reading a thesis proposal that a student sent me and I didn’t read it on my monitor, I printed out all 35 pages and read it from the paper copy. However, On Demand Books will not help you search a book, highlight passages, and enter them in another document you’re working on. It won’t allow you to edit a document you’re collaborating on with someone else. And it won’t allow you to share a document wirelessly with a friend over a cup of coffee. This is where a future version of Kindle or a similar machine will come in. Add the electronic paper display which does not strain the eyes, and you have a winner.

In an excellent article recounting his career, Epstein proposes that his company’s ATM-like book printing machines would be a great way for the 47 million Americans whose native language is not English to buy books. I agree! I keep trying to buy books in Hungarian (especially now that I’d like to read to my daughter in Hungarian in the hopes that she’ll be bilingual), but that’s not an easy thing to do. On-line ordering is my best bet, but selection in the US is limited while shipping costs from Hungary are exorbitant.

My guess is that currently both electronic book readers and the ATM-like book printers can get a share of the market. However, in the (vaguely defined) long run, I would bet on electronic book readers.

Andrew Kun

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