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.”
The E-Book Future
In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, author Steven Johnson described some of the ways the E-Book “will change the way we read and write.” Johnson argues that E-Books are a technology that, like the Internet itself, fundamentally changes the rules of communication.
In addition to making it easier and incredibly immediate to purchase books, Johnson sees E-Book technology being able to create a searchable, “shadow version” of the entire library of books one has read from childhood to the present.
“It is hard to overstate the impact that this kind of shift will have on scholarship. Entirely new forms of discovery will be possible. Imagine a software tool that scans through the bibliographies of the 20 books you’ve read on a specific topic, and comes up with the most-cited work in those bibliographies that you haven’t encountered yet.”
Johnson also notes data from Amazon showing Kindle owners buying far more books since purchasing the device. The flipside of the ease of impulse buying is the equal ease the author finds in jumping from book to book. As if our attention spans weren’t shrinking enough already, Johnson points out the difficulty in maintaining “linear, deep-focus reading” on a device in which the reader can instantly switch to almost any other book in the world — or easily jump online to surf the web.
E-Books are also beginning to impact the library world, as noted in the April 13 issue of the journal Library Hotline. A piece here notes Amazon’s mixed responses to libraries who are checking out Kindles to their patrons.
Apparently, Amazon does not pursue enforcement of their policy excluding library lending, thanks in part to a grey area of interpretation of their Terms of Service. The policy blocking “distribution” to any third party is vague enough for some libraries to have begin lending the devices, a service one library director in New Hampshire describes as “a great opportunity” for patrons to discover that they like the new technology and consider purchasing their own.
Library E-Book lending could also be a cheaper alternative to Inter-Library Loans and expensive newspaper subscriptions, but the $360+ replacement fee for returning a damaged Kindle rather dwarfs the usual ten-cents-per-day overdue fee so many of us have gotten used to.
Johnson’s Wall Street Journal piece also notes the possibility of E-Books ushering in a “standardized micropayment system” for online content that could even, in a happily ironic twist, help make newspapers profitable again.
