[geeks] Anyone looking for a house in the Pacific Northwest

[Lionel Peterson]

Joshua,

Overhead is the difference.

The Internet Bookmobile prints on demand, using donated equipment,
power & personnel.

Borders (or other bricks & mortar company) have to print them en masse,
store them, ship the finished product and *pay* for equipment, power &
personnel.

The $1 payment is really a token payment, IMHO - as I recall, the raw
materials (paper, toner & binding) probably cost $1 +/-.

If you wanted to print a 250 page book at home, that would consume 5%
of a 5,000  page toner cartridge (at $50 for the cartridge, that's
$2.50 for the toner), add in a half-ream of paper ($2? $1 if your
printer duplexes and you use both sides of the paper), and let's say
binding is free... You spent $3.50 +/- for your *free* book... Factor
in your time to oversee all this, and $5-7 doesn't seem that bad...

Lionel

--- Joshua D Boyd <jdboyd at cs.millersville.edu> wrote:

> Did anyone see the news reports about the Internet bookmobile?
> http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/10/09/bookmobile/?x
> http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php
> http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_10/cisler/
> 
> Well, I rather dislike reading books my computer screen, and I want
> to know if these people can one off bound books for $1, why do I have
> to pay $7 for them at Borders, or whatever.
> 
> I really should ebay for books more, but currently I can't afford
> orders large enough to justify the hassle of shipping.


=====
Lionel

"Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten
programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software"
Bill Gates, in "An OpenLetter to Hobbyists" dated February 3, 1976
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