It’s a common problem, whether you’re a college student, or you just like to read – your local bookstore runs out of the book you want, or the book is out of print, so they have to put it on backorder for you. That means it may take weeks for you to get what you want, and that can be an eternity if you need it for a class. But what if you brought the printing press to the bookstore? In Cambridge, MA, Harvard Book Store will introduce its new Espresso Book Machine on September 29. The Espresso is essentially a big printer that can churn out library quality, professionally bound books on-site. It takes around four minutes to make a 300 page book, and the machine can print and bind titles up to 830 pages long.
The Espresso is a serious investment at $100,000 for a high-speed color printing model. That said, a bookstore presumably saves on shipping and supply chain costs, not to mention saving store space typically used for pre-printed inventory. Also, reported cost per page is only 1 cent. Perhaps most importantly, customers are more likely to walk in when they know they can walk out with the book they want.
The biggest issue right now is the availability of titles. The Espresso currently has 1.6 million books in its catalog as well as a number of selections from the Google collection. However, a major portion of the available titles are pre-1923 books in the public domain, which means their copyrights have expired. So will the in-print and in-copyright catalog grow in time to satisfy market demand? It’s unclear at this point. Regardless, print-on-demand books are an interesting premise in theory, and we’ll keep close tabs on the evolution of this new technology.
(Story via UNLVRebelYell.com; Photo via Morguefile; Learn more about Espresso at OnDemandBooks.com)
