Innovative newspaper stall, or modernized union printing

Why is the newspaper business not dead yet? I can name at least two advantages of a newspaper over Internet resources:

1. Paper media.
2. The ability to buy at any stop.

The paper carrier has the following advantages: the paper does not glare. The screen of a laptop, netbook, tablet, book reader or phone still flashes, even if it is matte. It is annoying. And on paper, you can chant, write something, make notes. Paper still has its advantages.
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The presence of stalls at every corner also has its advantages. It so happens that there is no internet at hand, and I want to read. Buying a newspaper.

But newspapers have a whole bunch of flaws:

1. News appears later than in the Internet resources.
2. Comments to the news are either missing or express the interest of a narrow number of people.
3. In the newspaper, usually only 5 to 10 percent is interesting to me personally, and the rest is intended for some other people.
4. On many topics that interest me there are no newspapers at all.

So, I propose an idea of ​​the future, with something not so far away. You can implement it now, technically possible. This idea will combine the advantages of newspapers and online resources.

Innovative newspaper stall: terminal printer

This is essentially a normal terminal, but it still has a laser printer. You choose an Internet resource and print from it a feed of news or articles. Printing can be selected simply by RSS feed, maybe by tags, maybe by keywords. What to offer the reader decides the resource itself.

Benefits of a terminal printer

The cost of printing in our time is very low. It may be a bit more expensive than typographical printing, but if you remember how much unnecessary information you personally have in a newspaper, it turns out that printing on plain paper with a laser printer is still more profitable.

It takes the terminal much less space than a newspaper stall, and even less than a machine that sells new newspapers, because the paper there is much more compact. In addition, he does not require an employee - the seller.

At the same time there is not any limitation on resources - print everything that is available on the Internet.

How resources will offer their product

Of course, if the terminal offers free surfing on the Internet, then no one will print anything, everyone will just watch the Internet for free. Well, maybe not everything, but the queue is formed exactly.

Therefore, each site that offers printing of its materials should create a special page, such as example.com/print_to_terminal, on which it would display information channels that can be printed. Terminal-printer shows only this page of the site and that's it. On this page, the resource offers different print design themes: larger text, smaller, output with comments, or no comments. On Habré, one could only offer output of comments that have been filled out, for example. Only gold posts could be displayed on Darty.

The duty to make markup in CSS must be passed on to sites. Here it is not cool, but they do it more conveniently.

How much would a printout cost to a customer?

The cost price of a sheet of A4 paper is 20 kopecks, printing is about the same (if it is in bulk). Plus the cost of equipment, rental, Internet. I think that the seal could be in the region of 1 ruble per sheet for one-sided printing, 1.50 for duplex printing. Printing can be cheaper if it is economical, it can be more expensive if it is contrast.

The client pays only for the pages, and can put a restriction himself: print no more than 20 pages, for example.

And here comes the most interesting: the resource can start asking for money for printing its materials! For example, 50 kopecks per page. Why not? It is clear that if you wish, you can print anything and just at home on the printer, and not pay for anything. So what if the price is reasonable, why not pay your favorite resource 20-30 rubles?

What will happen to the newspapers?

The paradox is that the terminal-printers will not destroy the newspaper, if it gives quality information. Even more: newspapers will be charged with the task of printing their materials, they will be transferred to the terminals.

Good newspapers will be able to expand their influence, because now people will be able to print only what they are really interested in. We expect paper savings, increased efficiency, increased competition. Newspapers will be able to more quickly receive feedback. For big fans, you can make a conclusion of the newspaper entirely.

You can vary the work with advertising - advertising will become more targeted: if a customer orders repair materials, then give advertising on repairs. This will give a much higher percentage of response to advertising, and lower costs for the advertiser. Such a direct on paper.

Additional kayfushki bloggers and writers

Many writers who do not want to communicate with publishers any more can start selling their works through terminals. And many bloggers will be able to start getting a lot of money for their work. They will be able to attract to their work those who do not like to read from the screen, or who don’t have a computer at all.

Moreover, some writers will be able to do such a thing: upload pieces of their works to the Internet, and offer to print the rest of the pieces. It will be faster than receiving a paper book in the mail. Of course, printing on sheets is worse than the finished binding. But book binding is also not a problem.

Questions of authorship and fees for portals

If you are the only author on the resource, then there is no problem, get paid. But if the resource is written by different people? What is usually free? It's more complicated. Can authors rely on payment?

Further more: if I print out comments on the article, the author of the comment can also claim something. And on some resources, reading comments is more interesting than the post itself. How to solve these financial moments?

I think that these issues should be discussed in advance. Entering into the community you sign a certain document that you refuse the reward, but you do not reject the authorship, for example. If this document is not signed, then the posts and comments of this user are not displayed. And it is possible that the resource begins to pay a certain percentage of users. Or provide a fee is not money, but advertising on the site.

And where is the confidence that the terminal pays all the money to the resource?

This system initially assumes a large resource control for what is printed. When the terminal accesses the server for pages, the site server records the request and the number of pages.

There is an option that the terminal can cache the information, and sell it again (Not the terminal itself, of course, but the terminal server). But it can be easily checked as follows: you change some symbols on the site and buy a print page on the terminal. If the sign has not changed, then the terminal sells the cache. You can present atat telenalshchikam.

Of course, the reputation of the owners of the terminals is more important for them, and most likely they will not deal with these. But, as they say, you want peace - get ready for war. Such protection is also possible: the site, giving materials, each page assigns a code in small print. And the site asks its customers from time to time to send these codes back to the site. If the codes match and do not come across twice, then the terminals work honestly.

Information that must be in the terminals without royalty

I think a lot of things should be in the terminals. For example: the Constitution, Codes, Laws. If we are fighting for a legal society, then we should have easy access to our laws by which we live.

Current maps of the city. Not everyone has GPS, <irony> and not even everyone has Glonass installed </ irony>. And maps with landmarks. If the city is interested in attracting tourists, then it can do such things.

Telephone directory of the main services of the city. Addresses and profiles of hospitals. Schedule of trains and intercity buses. Is there some useful information? And the terminalmen themselves should take care of its placement.

Problems for terminal installers

The only problem I see is the installation of printers in the terminals. Although, I think you can always agree with the Chinese. Our IT specialists will cope with the development.

Comparison with Print on Demand technology

In the comments, many users have remembered the opportunity to print a newspaper anywhere in the world. Now it is already implemented in expensive hotels based on the Prin on Demand technology. Newspapers are very expensive, but affordable.

The idea is different - you do not just print a ready-made newspaper, but create your own collection. You have much more opportunities in this case.

Who can realize the idea

I received 2 letters with a proposal to open branches of my idea. This makes me happy. It does not please only that I myself will not be able to realize this idea, I give full account of this. And who can?

If we talk about Russia, then large terminals owners and major news portals, such as lenta.ru and gazeta.ru, will be able to implement it. If terminal clients begin to add printers to some terminals, and large Internet publications create an information base for them, then you can count on success.

However, intuition tells me that such systems will not be implemented by us. Either large publishing holdings will want to stake out a place in the future, or search giants such as Google will start to make such services.

It is possible that electronic stalls that print any newspaper will appear first, and then functions will begin to be added to them: printing a translation, printing a ribbon of major news portals, printing popular blogs.

And Russia will begin to implement the same projects only when the idea spreads to the west.

Authorship

We kindly request: when reprinting this material refer to my personal page .

Pictures for illustration taken from Wikipedia .