Library of Congress to Issue Public Domain Works via Amazon's CreateSpace

Business Wire: "CHARLESTON, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CreateSpace, part of the Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) group of companies, today announced an agreement with The Library of Congress to make at least 50,000 public domain books available through www.amazon.com. The Library of Congress also reached an agreement with Amazon Europe to make tens of thousands of books in the public domain available around the world to customers on www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de and www.amazon.fr using print on-demand technology, an inventory-free, cost-efficient publishing solution that only manufactures titles as customers order them. This announcement with The Library of Congress follows the announcement in February 2010 that The British Library would be bringing at least 65,000 public domain titles to market using print on-demand. From Victorian classics to 'penny dreadfuls,' readers now have access to The British Library’s unique collection of historic content. ... "

Xerox To Sell On-Demand Espresso Book Machines to Retailers

Repeat after me: Dead on arrival. Engadget: "When we got our first glimpse of the Espresso Book Machine from On Demand Books we were of course thoroughly charmed by the Rube Goldberg nature of the thing, but were left feeling unconvinced of the practicality of it -- would people really pay money for custom-printed physical copies of classic books they can download for free? Is it really a viable choice for self-publishing? We may be skeptics, but Xerox is a believer, putting its reseller weight behind the machine (which uses not one but two of the company's printers internally) ... "