http://en.oreilly.com/toc2008/public/schedule/speaker/134

http://en.oreilly.com/toc2008/public/schedule/detail/170

Just-in-time publishing is often thought of as a way for big
warehouses to satisfy the “long tail” of demand for small numbers of
a great variety of items. But while that’s one of its applications,
its potential goes far beyond that.

We start by examining the numbers behind just-in-time publishing, then
take a fresh look at some business models implied by those numbers.

    * How much floorspace (i.e., real estate) does an on-demand
      printing machine require? How expensive is it, and what are the
      maintenance and training requirements?

    * How many pages (books) can it produce in a given amount of time?

Using this quantitative data and some projection, we will look at
reasons why Kinkos might be in a position to do as much publishing as
Barnes & Noble, and do a better job of it. We’ll also examine some of
the non-monetary results of such developments: how they can lead to
richer and more participatory experience for readers and booksellers,
and fundamentally change the way authors and readers relate to each
other.

    * What can you offer for walk-in customers to do while they’re
      waiting for their book to print?

    * What new forms of interaction can you offer a customer who has
      just printed text from an electronic network? Would the author
      like a way to be notified, or to receive feedback directly?

    * If you know what customers want (as opposed to what a mass print
      run predicted they’ll want), how can you use this knowledge to
      discover what else they might want, or to put them in contact
      with other customers who are interested in the same things?

    * What would in-store surface area look like if it reflected
      reality? If a customer prints a book, why not print two and
      shelve one, so that the shop reflects what people in that
      community are interested in? Or perhaps print two of just the
      cover, and post one?

    * What is a book? Does it have to be done before it’s published?
      What if the readers could choose formats, or alternate covers?
      What if they could assemble their own anthologies, and share
      them with other customers?

Karl Fogel is an open source developer and author. After working on
CVS and writing “Open Source Development With CVS” (Coriolis, 1999,
cvsbook.com), he went to CollabNet, Inc as a founding developer in the
Subversion project. Based on his experiences there, he wrote
“Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free
Software Project” (O’Reilly, 2005, producingoss.com). After a brief
stint as an Open Source Specialist at Google, he left to become editor
of QuestionCopyright.org. He writes and speaks regularly on copyright
reform and on the application of open source principles to areas
outside software.