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Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

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Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#71

Post by ghaff »

interestica wrote: post #35
hinkley wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I missed the lede. You are correct, he is doing exactly that. So my conclusion is bunk, although the decision tree I loosely mapped out might still be useful for others so I'll leave it as is.

Do photo printing services (or existing self-publishing services) assess content for copyright infringements? Or do they pass it off with "you assert that you have the rights to print this content"? I suspect something along those lines could work for this too. If the service can be 'blind' to what is being collected (eg, all happens on the user's device and the central printer just takes the collected file). Automat…

Anecdotal but I published a book through what was at least then Createspace at Amazon. Many of the chapters were adapted from previous blog posts of mine and the book was flagged. I sent Amazon some links and they quickly cleared it.

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#72

Post by drusepth »

I'm interested in the physical book printing coming soon -- have you found a good vendor for printing and binding on demand?

I've been looking for vendors for a related service (printing formatted world bibles for writers from notebook.ai) but everyone I've found has either been way too expensive (unless you reach bulk quantities), low quality (often only low-grade paperback), slow shipping, and/or had other red flags that made me think twice about using them.

Would love to hear if you found any interesting prospects!

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#75

Post by yorgos_kats »

drusepth wrote: post #72

I'm interested in the physical book printing coming soon -- have you found a good vendor for printing and binding on demand? I've been looking for vendors for a related service (printing formatted world bibles for writers from notebook.ai) but everyone I've found has either been way too expensive (unless you reach bulk quantities), low quality (often only low-grade paperback), slow shipping, and/or had other red flag…

Print on demand is a challenge by itself. Depending on where your offer the service, you can source local small printing facilities that focus on PoD. I have done that in UK where I am based. However for global reach you would need to partner with companies like blurb or lulu. We are exploring a combination of both but it is early to pick a clear winner. Logistics are hard, especially today, what can I say.

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#76

Post by dmix »

jamez wrote: post #34

A few years ago I founded a company that did something very similar. The idea of Memeoirs[1] was that, back in the 2000s, some of your most thoughtful and interesting conversations happened via email. You could trace the story of your life collecting some of your most important emails with our webapp, which worked with Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook, and then have a printed version mailed to you. It all started in a simila…

That’s great experience raising $500k and going through the incubator experience. The (I’m guessing late) 2000s was willing to gamble on consumer plays like this, you don’t see that often at all today. HN used to have more stuff like this.

I think the closest real world (as in wide scale commercialization or deployment) of your original idea was Facebook’s automated video they made for each account (assuming they had enough content) playing back your history via photos, friends, events etc. Cant remember the name of that video feature just now.

There’s always a core idea in each product that has some practical value somewhere.

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#77

Post by jamez »

dmix wrote: post #76
jamez wrote: post #34

A few years ago I founded a company that did something very similar. The idea of Memeoirs[1] was that, back in the 2000s, some of your most thoughtful and interesting conversations happened via email. You could trace the story of your life collecting some of your most important emails with our webapp, which worked with Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook, and then have a printed version mailed to you. It all started in a simila…

That’s great experience raising $500k and going through the incubator experience. The (I’m guessing late) 2000s was willing to gamble on consumer plays like this, you don’t see that often at all today. HN used to have more stuff like this. I think the closest real world (as in wide scale commercialization or deployment) of your original idea was Facebook’s automated video they made for each account (assuming they had…

Yes, it was a great experience. I too have the impression that investors these days are looking for a more proven track record before buying in, especially for B2C products, but I think some markets are still open to "gambles".

As for real world products: Shutterfly/Snapfish are still looking healthy, and Google Photos is pushing hard their print store, which is where we were eventually heading to. And in the category "real world products that never were" - WhatsApp reached us shortly after the acquisition by FB. They were interested in partnering up with us, until all of a sudden they weren't anymore.

The core idea, as you say, is always there. For us it was the importance of Memory, which will keep on cropping up on many products to come. You just got to be riding the right one. :-)

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#78

Post by andywaite »

interestica wrote: post #33

I bring this up occasionally: If you use Pocket (built into Firefox and low-friction plugin for other browsers incl mobile) the Kobo e-reader is awesome. You can import Pocket articles to read offline and they are essentially displayed as epub e-books. They're also displayed in print-optimized format (no ads). E-ink ends up being a great way to read these long-form articles.

Another option is to use e-ink Android tablet such as Boyue Likebook, where you can install the native Pocket app.

Re: Show HN: Turn your “read later” folder into a physical book

#79

Post by graeme »

interestica wrote: post #33

I bring this up occasionally: If you use Pocket (built into Firefox and low-friction plugin for other browsers incl mobile) the Kobo e-reader is awesome. You can import Pocket articles to read offline and they are essentially displayed as epub e-books. They're also displayed in print-optimized format (no ads). E-ink ends up being a great way to read these long-form articles.

I tried that, pretty great. My one gripe: it only syncs “articles” and there’s a lot of content pocket doesn’t recognize as articles.

Find any way around that? Mailchimp newsletter html versions are a big one.

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