keith said:
>   You call that what comes out of a consumer printer a book!

for the most part, yeah.  use "half-letter" or a5, for a good size.
plus you need to "bind" the pages, maybe put a nice cover on it.

but a heavy-duty stapler works well enough to do the "binding",
and a wrap-around adhesive slick cover is simple to engineer...

the internet bookmobile was doing this a decade ago already...


>   Nahhh! just a bunch of loose sheets of paper.

wrong.


>   Even if I had a binding machine (true there are copy shops),
>   and the high quality paper for those nice color spreads
>   (costs to much for normal consumers)

you don't need "a binding machine".  unless you want one.

and people are already printing full-color stuff regularly,
most often missing-dog flyers and garage-sale posters...


>   why print it?

well, there might be any number of good reasons, or at least
reasons which the person who is doing the printing considers
to be "good enough" to spend the resources to do the printing.

but i'd guess that the most typical reason would be because
the book means enough to the person that they want to have
a tangible -- i.e., _physical_ -- copy of it, as a sort of talisman.

you know, the kind of book that was extremely meaningful?
the kind of book you _love_?  the kind that changes your life?

so you want something representing it that you can _touch_.

in much the same way that a ticket-stub serves as a "reminder"
-- or a souvenir -- of that concert that you and your sweetheart
went to for your first date, the night you made love the first time.

that's what i would suspect will be the most compelling reason.

but i suppose every person will have their own unique reasons...

and who are we to tell them that their reasons aren't any good?


>   I am very happy with sitting in bed, on the couch,
>   or where ever reading on my 17" lap top. The earth
>   disapating from its bottom is, almost as good as a warm
>   fire place(I do not have one).

that's cool.  (or warm, as the case may be.)  and that's _you_.
and i am most certainly not gonna tell you that you're wrong.
whatever you want to do is fine with me.  but likewise i'm not
gonna tell anyone else that they're wrong to print out a book.
if that's what they want to do, i'm gonna tell 'em to "go for it".


>   Why would anyone waste all that paper.

except that they obviously don't consider it to be a "waste".

they consider it to be a good use of resources they paid for.


>   As for me I do not print anything any more
>   unless I have to. It is just a waste.

i'm very much like you.  haven't had a working printer for years.
maybe a few times a year i ask my girlfriend to print something
on her machines at work, but for the most part, i don't miss it...

but that's me.  other people do things differently.  c'est la vie.


>   I had a friend (has died), he use to print his emails
>   and read them from paper.

perhaps god struck him down -- for wasting paper.     :+(

(oops.  sometimes i do cross the line.  but i always admit it.)


>   He simply could not get himself accostumed
>   to reading off a computer screen/monitor.

well, see, there you go, another very good reason to print stuff.


>   Sorry, I think the future should be digital.

the future _will_ be digital.  correction:  the future _is_ digital
even as we speak...  and it will only become even more so...

but we are also still physical beings.  who value physical stuff.
that has always been true, and will undoubtedly always be true.

still, we don't need corporate publishers to have physical books.

-bowerbird