Adobe Max 2009 – Wrap Up, Part 3

Printing on Demand

Overview Newspapers and book publishers are folding everyday so it’s obvious that the publishing industry needs to cut their costs while still providing a product. For example the NY Times publishing cost of supplying papers all year long could cover the cost of getting Kindles for all it’s yearly subscribers. So change is needed if print will compete with the electronic.

Enter http://magcloud.com/ from HP.

Summary Taking any PDF you submit, MagCloud sends you a saddle stitched magazine printed on one of many of HP’s indigo printing vendors. Once you’ve published your magazine you can sell it online through their service and determine your own profit margin. Currently MagCloud charges about a dollar per copy. Beyond printing and selling through their service there are plans to open up their API to allow users to take elements from your site, “clip it”, creates a PDF, sends it to MagCloud, and print a magazine of their own. We should see access to this MagCloud API later this year.

Perspective With the open API addition we could open this up to allow students to drag and drop course curriculum content and create their own magazine. Or maybe you are at Williams Sonoma and looking to create your own cookbook and save their recipes. Or if we just wanted a quick proposal (plans to add perfect bound printing coming soon) to be sent to a client we could call on this.

Other applications for this are the Obama Time Capsule where you can personalize yourself into a professionally published and designed book.http://www.theobamatimecapsule.com/

Or create your own personalized magazine through Time:http://www.slate.com/id/2219063/

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