Book Vending Machines
A recent NPR story described yet another revolution in the publishing industry that could change the way we purchase and read books.
The Espresso Book Machine is “essentially an ATM for books that automatically prints, binds, and trims, on demand at point of sale, perfect-bound, library-quality paperback books.” About a hundred pages can be printed per minute (meaning it will take about a quarter of an hour to churn out that copy of War and Peace I’ve been meaning to scan on my next coffee break).
The manufacturer claims books will cost about a penny a page and,
“Ultimately, the EBM will make it possible to distribute virtually every book ever published, in any language, anywhere on earth, as easily, quickly, and cheaply as e-mail.”
Other revolutionary claims for the “EBM” see it replacing the traditionally centralized supply chain for book distribution with its “direct-to-consumer retail model.” Over two million public domain and in-copyright titles are currently available at the fifteen or so current vending machine locations in bookshops, libraries, and universities around the world. The manufacturer sees the devices eventually costing about as much as a traditional copy machine.
This statement from the company’s founder discusses his view of “the end of the Gutenberg era” and the revolutionary new publishing infrastructure offered by devices like E-Books and the EBM.
This spec sheet gives more interesting details of the machine itself, with the impressive claim that the EBM “makes it possible to distribute virtually every book ever published, in any language, anywhere on earth, as easily, quickly, and cheaply as e-mail.”
This CNN video shows the machine at work at a London bookshop, with the store manager describing how the revolutionary device all the sudden makes his shop “ten times bigger.”
Metro Bookstores
A giant hole exists in the heart of the Metro area. Between the Borders on the Northwest Expressway and Norman’s Barnes & Noble, a span of 26 miles that must be home to tens of thousands of book-reading, coffee-drinking, magazine-perusing Oklahomans, there are exactly zero big-box bookstores.
I have to admit that every time a construction project of a certain size starts going up on my benighted side of town, a tiny spark of hope flickers in my heart. Inevitably the building will turn out to be another 24-hour pharmacy, and I’ll wonder again if some sophisticated demographic study has led the corporate decision-makers to conclude that this massive stretch of urban real estate couldn’t support such an enterprise.
Maybe there are too many others like me who use these giant bookstores like libraries. I’ll read a magazine article or two if I can find a vacant overstuffed chair, and I’ll page through a few books that have caught my eye and write down the titles to look up later on the real library’s online catalog. This probably counts as some sort of intangible shoplifting since I’m not paying for the pleasure of reading these words-for-sale, but if they were that concerned I can’t believe they’d have made the chairs so comfortable.
Oklahoma City’s Black Hole of Big Bookstores has also happily left room for a few hardy, independent shops to fill the literary void.
My favorite is Book Beat & Co., which is exactly the kind of singular, ruggedly individualist bookstore that the giant chains would try to crush under their wheels. Book Beat & Co. has moved to several locations around the south side of Oklahoma City since it opened in 1997, and its current site at 1139 SW 59th Street features an amazing collection of art, music, and books that founder Shilo Brown describes as ”the rare and obscure, even the forbidden.”
The store’s “Electric Chair Gallery” of local artists is an Oklahoma City treasure in itself, and the well-tended shelves of great fiction, art, music, philosophy, and avant-garde books make Book Beat & Co. an unmissable destination for Metro book lovers. As the staff personally selects each title, they can almost always provide the best kind of personal insight from one book lover to another. Book Beat & Co. is also a hangout for Oklahoma writers and artists and stocks a great selection of locally-grown books, zines, CDs, and chapbooks.
Maybe the south side doesn’t needs its own soulless book super-stores after all.
