An ATM for Books
Published by Rob Flickenger December 24th, 2006 in Inventions, Print-on-demand, Publishing
Jason Epstein’s $50,000 on-demand book printer was mentioned on CNN’s Fortune Small Business site. From the article:
“Buying a book could become as easy as buying a pack of gum. After several years in development, the Espresso - a $50,000 vending machine with a conceivably infinite library - is nearly consumer-ready and will debut in ten to 25 libraries and bookstores in 2007. The New York Public Library is scheduled to receive its machine in February.”
I attended a session held by Mr. Epstein at the Conference on the Book back in October. If you are interested in the history (and probable future) of print, I highly recommend reading his excellent Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. It’s a retrospective covering his fifty years in the publishing business, from working the slush pile at Doubleday in the fifties to his forty-year reign as editorial director at Random House. It concludes with the rise of print-on-demand publishing and the launch of his new company, On Demand Books.
2007 will certainly be an interesting year for books, as rapidly improving book production technology converges with user generated content and the online search giants. Maybe instead of building another Great Library, the repository of all printed human knowledge will be highly decentralized this time around…
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