How cool is this?! A machine that is small enough to fit in a bookstore can print a quality paperback with a full-color cover in just a few minutes. According to the company behind the Espresso Book Machine, On Demand Books, about 4 million public domain and in-copyright titles may be accessed through the company data base. This number doesn’t include the course workbooks, family recipe collections, student dissertations, user manuals and other self published endeavors which can be printed as well. The cost for a book–about $15-$20.
On Demand Books was started in 2003 by Jason Epstein, former editorial director at Random House. For an old publishing hand, Mr. Epstein has embraced the changes in his business with pragmatic enthusiasm. His comments to the 2009 O’Reilly Tools of Change For Publishing Conference ( a/k/a “What Gutenberg Unleashed” ) are entertaining and insightful.
EBM machines are located worldwide, including the Harvard Bookstore, Blackwell Bookshop in London, and the Library of Alexandria (Egypt, not UVA!) One is also perched in McNally Jackson Books in NYC. I look forward to meeting a representative of On Demand Books there next month for an on-site demonstration! More information to follow!
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