I've been tracking, on and off, the development of the Espresso Book Machine and am totally fascinated by it. Back in 2006 we posted an article about it to the CCF website and today we found a press release from the Xerox Corporation announcing that Xerox technology is to fuel the Espresso Book Machine. Even more promising for what has been termed "the ATM for books," is the fact that Xerox's worldwide agreement with On Demand Books includes global marketing and sales support.
Xerox and On Demand Books will jointly market and sell, on a worldwide basis, the Xerox 4112 Copier/Printer together with the Espresso Book Machine -- a fully integrated solution that prints, binds and trims books with full color covers on demand in retail locations and libraries.The Espresso Book Machine can produce paperbacks in variable combinations of trim sizes between 4.5" x 5.0" and 8.25" x 10.5" for a production cost less than one cent per page.This technology should be able to help us get our hands on out of print books and it should also help small publishers, as they won't be forced to keep large inventory of titles on hand.
I am an author, editor, and bookseller and don't see the Espresso Book Machine and related technologies, whether they be amazon.com's Kindle, etc, as threats. Instead, I see them as enlarging the reservoirs from which readers worldwide can more easily satisfy their thirst. What do you think?
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