POD Transforming Publishing

There are many benefits that Print-On-Demand has brought to the publishing world. POD makes it possible for anyone to publish a book for very little money. Now that we have the technologies to create a book that is cheap, easy, and quick to reproduce we can save money not only for the author but for the reader as well. Now that it is super easy to make a book, there is no need to find a company to publish your book. You become your own publisher. Society's recent technological advancements help lead to the creation of the Espresso Book Machine. Instead of uses old printing presses that would take forever to create one book, we now can make a book in minutes with the Espresso Book Machine.
"The machine can process a 300-page book (including cover and glue binding) in a few minutes,
which seems to support the American manufacturer’s definition of its product as an “ATM for books”."-pg 72.


Now people can create a book about anything they want. Philip M. Parker decided to use this cheap form of printing a book by compiling a bunch of information he gathered from the internet into organized books. He ended up publishing 200,000 books that were then sold on Amazon. Since POD is so easy and cheap, it is much easier to edit and update your book whenever you want. POD has aloud for anyone to create a book were their creative will not be stifled and it won't break the bank.

Post-Digital Print / Villemard

In the past as well as the present it seems as though with every new technological advancement related to the media is thought to be the new form of communication that would get rid of print. In chapter one of the book entitled, “Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing since 1894,”  Alessandro  Ludovico discusses the French artist Villemard. In 1910, Villemard made a series of postcards that showed his vision of the future. Some of these were depictions of people using audio instead of print. He envisioned a world where the audio had taken over all print medium. Instead of reading a book in school, children would wear strange helmet-like headphones that would play a recording of the book. The same idea would be used at home by listening to the newspaper that was recorded that morning. Although today it is true that we do use many audio based media in today’s world, print is still very relevant.

After the many years of trying to replace printed forms of communication it still exists. Even though the technology has advanced tremendously in the past 100 years, we are still holding on to print. No matter how hard designers try to replicate a paper made book onto the computer screen, there is nothing compared to holding the physical book in your hands. In the future, no matter how advanced our society becomes I believe that we will still hold a place for books in the media and also our hearts.

William H. Gass Article / Evolution of a Crazy Artist

In William H. Gass’ article entitled, In Defense of the Book- Why Books Are So Good, he examines the characteristics that a book has that a screen can not replicate. The materiality of the book itself is an import characteristic that can not be reproduced on the screen. The book becomes worn over time and gains charter from its many hours of use. A person can not tear a page in a book made for a screen nor can he mark it up with his own notes. The text along with the physical object of the book itself holds a certain place in your heart/memory but on the screen you only have the written text. A person could  build his own library with books. Without physical books there will be no libraries. A library is a place where one can go to satisfy their curiosity of whatever they can think of. It provides an environment where you can come to learn more about the world through factual books or escape from it with fictional writings. The look and feel of a book can attract a person that might not have otherwise been interested in it right away, to pick it up and read it.

About two years ago I went to a small bookstore in Wicker Park called Quimbys with my friend so she could get some books for her classes. Evolution of a Crazy Artist by Sophie Crumb was the first book at caught my eye. The giant lettering and bold graphics on the cover interested me enough to pick it up and look through it. This book is a collection of every drawing that this artist have made sense she was born. I ended up leaving the store empty handed because I did not have enough money to buy it. A couple of months later my friend surprised me with it as a present for my birthday. Now from time to time when I feel uninspired I will go through this book to give me motivation because I feel like my artwork relates the Sophie Crumb’s.