My good friend Jesse reads news from across the pond and sent me this interesting piece from the Times. It seems that UK bookstores are getting these giant printers that can be used to print books on demand. Think about it: You visit a bookstore and browse for books. You don’t find the one that you are looking for so you go to the back desk. They don’t have a copy of the book in stock, but in less than 10 minutes, they can print you one. The possibilities are endless.

Let’s face it, the Internet and electronic readers are not going to kill printed books. The biggest problem with books in my opinion is they can be painful to get. With the Internet, I can get any information that I need in a few clicks. Sure, I can find any book, but I have to wait a few days to get it in the mail. And that assumes, of course, that the book is still in print. And visiting the bookstore might not yield any results because of the physical limitations to having as many books as online retailers offer. We are to much of a “now” culture to wait for books.

Now, books that are in print, out of print, rare, popular are available to me in less than 10 minutes. What’s more, authors can sell books without printing the first copy. We are about to see another explosion of self-publishing mayhem. It’s my prediction that if these on demand publishers hit the states, we will see a complete shift in the bookstore business model.

And that’s my Altyrian View.