For Hardcore Book Nerds Only

I've got perhaps a dozen print-on-demand books in my library. Three of them are volumes that only ever appeared as p.o.d. titles, the rest being reprints of old books that might otherwise not be available. (Unless the audience for theological responses to Ernst Haeckel's version of evolutionary theory were to heat up considerably.)

All of them came my way over the past three years. And while they represent a tiny fraction of my acquisitions over that period, it's a percentage bound to grow over time, since this approach to "warehousing" and distribution makes a lot of sense with certain kinds of books. As artifacts, most of them seem more or less indisinguishable from other paperbacks. We'll see how they hold up over the next decade, but for now they seem fine.

So it's interesting to see what print-on-demand technology actually looks like in action. Well, perhaps "interesting" is overstating things. This video is for-the-trade advertisement rather than something meant for the general public. But here goes: