Find New Ways to Publish -- or Perish

There's no question our field has changed dramatically in the last two decades. How many of us work on bluelines anymore? When was the last time you copyedited with a red pencil instead of Track Changes? Or proofread for printer's errors on galleys?

Just writing that makes this cranky editor feel old. She also remembers her first job when she moved to Seattle in '93: selling books at the venerable Elliott Bay Book Company. Hand-selling books. At a brick-and-mortar (where seemingly steadfast bookshelves swung out to reveal secret caches of overstock in hidden rooms, employees could be caught stroking the books like lovers, and the smell of baking ginger-molasses cookies wafted from a cafe that was not a Starbucks).

But we know the only constant is change, so I'll ditch the sentimentality and get to the point. It's obvious by now that publishing is in the process of reinventing itself (or, more accurately, being pressured to do so or die). Here are a few of its new incarnations:

I'd Like a Vanilla Soy Latte and a Copy of Moby Dick, Please.
The UK Daily Mail reports the Blackwell book chain is testing out a new device that can print out a book -- cover, binding, and all -- in the time it takes to brew an espresso. The store currently offers 400,000 titles and hopes to expand to more than 1 million by the summer.

Coffee and books, now who would've thought!

I Can't Talk Now, I'm Reading
AP reports that Amazon just bought a company called Lexcycle, which has an app (Stanza) that lets you download books to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Apparently Kindle is just too darn big; maybe readers only want to take it one stanza at a time.

Offset Is Offline
OK, this isn't exactly breaking news, but I hadn't heard about it, so I thought perhaps some of you hadn't either. It seems that Kodak's come up with a digital inkjet printer, Stream, that combines the best of both worlds: the speed of traditional offset printing (up to 24 mph) with the digital flexibility to cheaply customize content. BusinessWeek notes that "The global printing industry is just at the beginning of a big digital transformation. ... Readers could tell publishers the sort of content they want; it's not hard to imagine subscribers receiving thousands of distinct printed copies of this magazine."

Let's hope customized content = more editing/proofing jobs and not just more typos.