Jeff Duntemann's ContraPositive Diary

Reports are pouring in from many places (including Tony Potts and the Make Blog) that the first publicly available Espresso Book Machine has been installed at the New York Public Library. I've been watching this thing since 2001, and I confess I've been a little puzzled why it's taken six years to get the damned thing to the starting gate. No matter; it's there, and it's now happily spitting out nicely formatted paper copies of public-domain books for library patrons.

Print-on-demand book manufacturing has been around for some time. The Xerox DocuTech machine first saw use in the early-mid 1990s, and it now has numerous competitors. The Espresso Book Machine is notable because it's a book manufacturing robot, and requires no human fussing to make a book. (Keeping it running long-term may require a little skilled labor, heh.) You basically select a book from its catalog and push a button, and a few minutes later you get a single copy of the book. This requires some cleverness, especially on the binding side, but it looks like they made it work. My experience in repairing copiers and duplicators suggests that it was reliability that held it back. If that problem's been solved, Espresso has its job cut out for it.

A fleet of these in the basement of a big bookstore could enable what I call "replenish-on-demand" bookselling, which could turn the book retailing business (and thus book publishing, which shapes itself in response to book retailing) inside out. I can only assume that Barnes & Noble and Borders are watching. When they decide to take the plunge, well, that will be the show to watch.