This is how most photo shops operate nowadays. You know, the photo shops where you back in the days used to leave your roll of negatives and come back 1h later and have your photos developed.

Many of them now have internet services where you can upload a set of photos and get them delivered to your door within a few days printed in various ways and binded as a professional book.

Things are improving fast. But there is still a reliance on physical standards such as paper size that may have less relevance in the future. Those small operators also tend to lack good coherent API design. My local still uses a horrible soap/java system. I am looking for something more low level as in defining exact paper size, fold points, and gluing etc. Whats the API for making a popup book, or a cardboard point of sale? My point is that more established forms of manufacturing lack the kind of accessibility that is present in some rapid prototyping setups.

Doesn't a VistaPrint analog or Google Cloud Print offer something like this?