For our own publishing company, we decided to set up an account with Lightning Source over other POD vendors such as Lulu, mainly because of cost.
These are, however, uneasy times for POD’s because of the big Amazon/BookSurge gang-up.
So for us, a tiny little publisher in Los Angeles, well, we don’t quite know what it would all mean if we couldn’t get our book on Amazon. We’re a little worried, at the same time realizing that we were going to be selling most of our books at readings, at parties, on the streets.
But, there is an exciting bit of news regarding Lightning Source and the future of on-demand publishing.
The Espresso Book Machine is something that I’ve been pretty geeked about since I first read about it being demoed at the New York Public Library sometime last year. Today, Lightning Source signed an agreement with On Demand Books, the maker of the Espresso Book Machine.
This means, hopefully soon, you will be able to walk into a book store that has one of these machines and order a copy of our books, or anybody else’s book on the Lightning Source catalog, and have it printed out in 15 minutes.
Cool. Check out this video to see the Espresso in action.