4 ms·

And after that: - Inkjet - Laser - Amazon

quietbritishjim 7y ago
That's not really compatible to improvements in printing technology. Printing on home inkjet or let was and still is hugely more expensive and slower per page than buying a mass produced book or newspaper, and Amazon didn't introduce any printing technology unless you were referring to e-ink used in Kindle (but they didn't invent it).
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Laserjet printing is comparable to the cost of commercial photocopying, at a few pennies per page. Inkjet is, of course, far more expensive. There is a trade-off in cost, speed, and access. If you've got a reasonably high-speed laserprinter, you can provide a printed copy of a book in a few minutes. There are binding options available as well, some of which are quite comparable to lower-grade commercial paperback bindings. Amazon's book sales inclue traditional hard- and soft-cover pre-printed materials, as well as print-on-demand, and electronic books. I'd consider most of Amazon's book sales and production at least adjunct to, and in cases, directly part of, improvements in print technology. Distribution itself has been a nontrivial problem.
- Symbiote 7y ago
  Laser printing introduced a cheap way to print small quantities at a decent quality. On the office multi-function printer, I can print booklets of up to something like 80 A3 (folded to A4) pages, with automatic stapling. Amazon (and others) have print-on-demand for small quantities of larger volumes.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Effectively, yes. You could add in typewriters, and a number of light-duty press and duplication methods: spirit copiers / mimeographs, stencils, photostats ("xerox"), and eventually dot-matrix, daisy-wheel, laserprint, and inkjet printers. Amazon and print-on-demand technologies also apply. Effectively a book, including binding and covers, can come out of a single machine. The Internet Archive has a print-on-demand system, though the only documentation I find of it is at the PoD Wikipedia article (photo of IA's printer-binder): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand

That's not really compatible to improvements in printing technology. Printing on home inkjet or let was and still is hugely more expensive and slower per page than buying a mass produced book or newspaper, and Amazon didn't introduce any printing technology unless you were referring to e-ink used in Kindle (but they didn't invent it).

dredmorbius 7y ago
Laserjet printing is comparable to the cost of commercial photocopying, at a few pennies per page. Inkjet is, of course, far more expensive. There is a trade-off in cost, speed, and access. If you've got a reasonably high-speed laserprinter, you can provide a printed copy of a book in a few minutes. There are binding options available as well, some of which are quite comparable to lower-grade commercial paperback bindings. Amazon's book sales inclue traditional hard- and soft-cover pre-printed materials, as well as print-on-demand, and electronic books. I'd consider most of Amazon's book sales and production at least adjunct to, and in cases, directly part of, improvements in print technology. Distribution itself has been a nontrivial problem.
Symbiote 7y ago
Laser printing introduced a cheap way to print small quantities at a decent quality. On the office multi-function printer, I can print booklets of up to something like 80 A3 (folded to A4) pages, with automatic stapling. Amazon (and others) have print-on-demand for small quantities of larger volumes.

dredmorbius 7y ago

Effectively, yes. You could add in typewriters, and a number of light-duty press and duplication methods: spirit copiers / mimeographs, stencils, photostats ("xerox"), and eventually dot-matrix, daisy-wheel, laserprint, and inkjet printers. Amazon and print-on-demand technologies also apply. Effectively a book, including binding and covers, can come out of a single machine. The Internet Archive has a print-on-demand system, though the only documentation I find of it is at the PoD Wikipedia article (photo of IA's printer-binder): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Print_on_demand