Is it webcomic Nirvana or the final sign of Armageddon?
There aren’t many details yet, but Cafe Press plans to offer CD and Books for print on demand. Like many other things on the Internet, it could be a replay of the California Gold Rush of the Mid 1800s. The only ones who made a killing were merchants selling equipment and tools, not would be prospectors.
I think the success of this will depend on CafePress’s prices for these, which for other products are usually pretty high. If anything, it would probably be cheaper and faster just to go down to your local Kinkos.
Saw the post a week or so agon their messageboard, was intrigued, but skeptical still.
… have you looked at Kinkos prices? I tried to print one of those 20 X 30 posters and was told it’d be $45 at Kinkos. I’m afraid to ask them about a novel sized perfect bound publication.
It’ll be good, considering the prices of POD which usually demand a fee and for those of us who can’t afford to print thousands of books, maybe good, but yes, they will be the ones making all of the profit.
*I just want a perfect bound collection of my stuff done on an offset printer for the color work and maybe put out a few novels I’m working on.*
If you just want to ‘share’ your work and not make a profit, which we do already, it’s great. *Ok, so I do have this incessant need and love of holding books, especially books containing things I’ve worked on and just want the darn book!*
But… I want to see the quality of this endeavor first. I’ve bought a few items from my stores in the past… still using a mousepad I bought in 2000, but being able to compile so many pages. I’ll give it a try to see how it looks if the price is right, because I DO want to put out graphic novelized sizes of my work on a professional press at least, but I’m also leery of Cafepress doing the usual thing of saying: You are limited in the amount of images you may use and/or must pay a small fee for each image.
I can’t wait until the instore print on demand machine actually makes it IN THE STORES. 😉 It’ll be affordable some day, to remain optimistic.
I have to agree that the condition that will make or break this service is the base price and options of the final product. Even if you have to wait until a certain day in the week so they can print them all at once, as long as the prices stay reasonable they’ll make a small fortune.