Steven Levy, in his The Technologist column in both last week's Newsweek (see "Rip This Book? Not Yet") and The Washington Post (see "Book Ripper Doesn't Bother Publishers, Yet"), highlights a fascinating new product in the imaging and printing space.
While Levy's assessment is that the Atiz Booksnap is not the catalyst that will trigger a revolution of book digitization and sharing among the masses (aka "Napsterize the book publishing industry"), it was particularly interesting to read Levy's account of his conversation with Patricia Schroeder, CEO of the Association of American Publishers.
Not that publishers seem worried. 'I'm not going to lose sleep over the BookSnap,' said Patricia S. Schroeder, the former congresswoman who is chief executive of the Association of American Publishers. 'We've been ready to sell e-books for 10 years,' she said. 'Everybody still likes physical books.' When it comes to potential infringement, she's more worried about abuse of print-on-demand machines that can quickly turn a digital file into a printed book for less than $10.
This is reminiscent of a quote I captured in a post on "Kindle Printing" late last year, and similar to thoughts that often arise when the super-fast Memjet print capabilities are described. (BTW Silverbrook's Memjet was a recent winner of a PC Magazine Technical Excellence award for 2007.)
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