Traditional bookshops have been hit hard by the wave of e-retailers, the biggest of which is obviously Amazon, that offer millions of books delivered to your door cheaply and quickly. However, a new product called the Espresso Book Machine could be about to give the advantage back to the bookshops.

There’s something magical about books. They contain the words of someone’s mind written down for all to read and process in any way we see fit. While the Amazon Kindle and its competitors are heading an electronic book revolution, there will surely always be a place for proper, printed books complete with illustrations and covers.

However, the amount of books which have been written and published over the years is huge, far too great a number to be kept in print and on shop shelves waiting to be bought. E-retailers have an advantage in this sense because they can offer a book for sale and then have it sent direct from the printer – a luxury not afforded to any bookshop, no matter how large.

This need not be a problem any longer though, thanks to the Espresso Book Machine, a Star Trek replicator-style machine which is able to print out and bind a book from scratch in around five minutes. On Demand Books has already installed machines in bookshops in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. And now Blackwell in London has installed one for a three-month trial period.

The machine currently has a catalog of 400,000 titles to choose from, most of which are old or out-of-print. In time, the EBM will contain the details of one million books, which The Times claims is the equivalent of 50 bookshops or 23 miles of shelving. And all that from a machine which resembles a large photocopier, and is just that in actual fact.

The pages are laser-printed before being clamped, encased in a cover, cut to size, and delivered into your hand. A book which would previously have been very difficult to find is now available within minutes of entering the bookshop.

As well as out-of-print books, the machine will be able to provide copies of new and current books, or even customers’ own creations by way of a PDF file. An Espresso Book Machine does not come cheaply, costing approximately $175,000, but it gives bookshop customers access to a huge range of books.

The EBM is being labeled as the biggest advance in publishing since the Gutenberg printing press was first created in 1436. Whether that’s true or not, it does offer bookshops a new weapon against the popularity of both the big online retailers and e-book readers.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 10:57 pm under Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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