out of print books come back to life as printed books

"It's like things are coming full circle," Google spokeswoman Jennie Johnson said. "This will allow people to pick up the physical copy of a book even if there may be just one or two other copies in some library in this country, or maybe it's not even available in this country at all."

via tech.yahoo.com

On Demand Books and Google teaming up to bring the ability to create bound and printed copies of the out-of-print books Google has scanned in. Starting with 2 million public domain works. $8 a pop suggested retail with a 25% fee half of which will go to charity.

These "public domain" books were published before 1923 — an era that includes classics like "Moby Dick" and "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" as well as very obscure titles. The paperbacks churned out in Wednesday's demonstration of the Espresso included "Lathe Work For Beginners," "Dame Curtsey's Book of Candy Making," and "Memoirs of A Cavalier," a Daniel Defoe novel that never caught on quite like his most famous work, "Robinson Crusoe."

On amazon:
Memoirs of a Cavalier is available for $23.99 or .99 in Kindle via public domain.
Dame Curtsey's Book of Candy Making - 1 used for $47
Lathe Work For Beginners - assuming this is the book by Yates which seems to be the classic then
a reprint for $9.90 an original for $30. For the reprint The Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,505,228

I went to some presentations about this machine years ago and it is neat to see it come to life. Easier, more satisfying in the form factor, and costs less than printing them out yourself. A store would need to print about 16,600 books to earn out the $100,000 cost to buy the machine (which you can lease) apart from supplies (and interest). Or to think about it in a slightly different way you need to print over 4,500 books a year for 4 years to cover the cost. Opens up a whole new, trickle of sales for stores. Perfect for colleges which is where they are starting.