The future of Publishing.

From an article in The Independent I learnt that there are 21 Espresso Book Machines in the world. These are capable of printing and binding a paperback book in less than four minutes. One of them is in a bookshop in Charing Cross Rd, London. The others, I believe, are in University libraries and other non-commercial locations.
They can print any book with a download from the internet.
I have speculated about these ever since I first heard of them. To me it seems obvious that any bookshop would do well to replace their shelves of multiple copies of in-stock books with displays of just a 'cover' image and a blurb, perhaps one copy only in stock for people who just have to handle a book before buying.
In my concept anyone could pay for a coded card which would enable them to either get a hardcopy immediately from the EBM or get an ebook copy downloaded onto their ereader or a thumb drive storage device. Those same cards could also be used in the same way as gift cards currently.
Combining the coded card concept with an Espresso machine in a display area would eliminate many of the costs borne by suffering publishers and retailers. No returns, no need to guesstimate the size of a needed print run, no shipping and storage costs (or much reduced) and much less retail floorspace required.
Drawbacks? For a start these machines are expensive. Secondly, so far they don't do hardcovers.
But this has to be the future of book retailing offline. Online is another story, as we know.

Sherlock Holmes and the Zombie Affair

Sherlock Holmes and the Zombie Affair is now on Smashwords and Amazon Kindle sites. As of now - May 27th 12:12am - 2 have sold on Kindle UK, 6 on Kindle US, and 13 on smashwords - of those 12 were free with the coupon.
This is the first week. Should be distributed to Sony, Apple, Kobo etc soon, via smashwords.
This is a tiny niche in the publication world, so the good thing is not much competition. Fiction-Mystery-British-Detective

Sherlock Holmes and the Zombie Affair

Finally! Just finished my 2010 Nanowrimo effort, and it is now available from smashwords. After much procrastination it is now a complete work @ 13,000 words, which is barely Novella length. This would have needed vast padding to reach the Nano-novel length of 50,000 words, and i think it is fine at the length it now is.
Priced at $0.99cents, I have a coupon code available; if anyone reading this would like a free copy, use coupon code AL89Q.

Hindu concept of sound

“Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also confirmed that in this age of Kali, Krishna has descended in the form of sound vibration. Sound is one of the forms which the Lord takes. Therefore it is stated that there is no difference between Krishna and His name.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Elevation to Krishna Consciousness, Ch 6)

This is very close to Creation as in the Old Testament, with the Word as prime original manifestation of Being