Does electronic publishing technology mean the end of the paper book? Not at all, argues Clive Thompson on Wired.com. Just as the “paperless office” actually used more paper than ever, the advent of self-publishing technologies like the Espresso Book Machine means that people will have the ability to create custom one-off books for every situation. It’s a bit of an obvious insight to us, of course, but the piece does have some interesting anecdotes about the ways the Espresso can be used. For example: Print-on-demand books can also become plastic—altered on the...

I got to the Missouri State University Bookstore in Columbia, Missouri in the early afternoon, and went downstairs to where they kept their Espresso machine. As I had a book made, I spoke with Heather Tearney, the manager of the Mizzou Media section where the machine was kept, and Nic Maglio, one of the operators. The book I picked out was The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar, by Maurice Leblanc. (Here’s the Project Gutenberg version.) I’d hoped to get another Arsène Lupin book that I had myself contributed to Project Gutenberg, but they didn’t have it available from the catalog—though...

I am going to be in St. Louis this weekend, visiting relatives, and will have a bit of time to myself to do touristy things—and it occurred to me that surely, St. Louis being the major metro area it is, there might be something there to do with e-books that I could look at for TeleRead. I am already planning to go by way of Columbia, Missouri, in order to check out the Espresso Book Machine at the University of Missouri Bookstore; what else might I find worthy of interest? I’m primarily interested in book- or e-book-related attractions, but...

It’s a cliché that the elderly are out of touch with the future, and prefer to cling to the way things were in the past rather than moving forward into the future. But there are plenty of exceptions to every rule, and 83-year-old Jason Epstein, the man behind the Espresso “ATM for books” is one of them. The Frankfurt Book Fair blog is carrying an article based on an interview with him about what he sees as the future of the publishing industry. Epstein first learned about “disintermediation”—the practice of removing middle-men from transactions—back in the 1980s, but it’s...

We've featured several stories about the web-connected print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine (EBM), which can access millions of digital books and create print versions in minutes. Most of those stories, however, are light on actual user reviews, so I was happy to stumble across this detailed summary of "the good, the bad, and the sexy" qualities of the EBM from librarian Rick Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen. His library at the University of Utah has had an EBM for two years now, and he's put together an insightful list of what works and what still needs work. You should read the full...

Egypt's Library of Alexandria has announced that it's placed 19,000 works from its collection on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) network, and plans to add another 150,000 Arabic titles soon. The library operates three EBMs, but this also means people around the world can print replicas of the library's titles from their nearest EBM. You can read the press release on On Demand Books' News page. Via INFOdocket...

I just posted about how Amazon, via self-publishing and agent-based publishing, poses a threat to publishers who still haven’t updated their business model to compete. Here’s a post from self-publishing booster J.A. Konrath’s blog that points out one of the reasons why Amazon is such a threat. Responding to one bookstore calling for a boycott of Stirred, the book he’s publishing under Amazon’s new Thomas & Mercer imprint (and which will consequently be placed as printed editions in bookstores as well as published electronically), Konrath points out that he has done a lot for bookstores over the years, and...

On the Self-Publishing Review blog, self-publishing author Rich Evans ponders whether it’s time to go e-book-only on his next self-published title. His first book, Asylum Lake, was self-published via an Espresso Book Machine, giving him a printed 6x9 paperback book for $10 each. He was able to start out with small print runs and sell them for $15 per book, plowing revenues back into getting more copies to have on hand. He did all right selling the print book for a while, especially after promoting it by releasing the first six chapters serially on-line. The Facebook page for the...

WNYC has a look at the Espresso book machine, brainchild of publishing pioneer Jason Epstein. The Espresso takes a digital file, then prints, cuts, and binds it to produce a completed book on demand over the course of a few minutes start to finish. Of course, we’ve covered the Espresso plenty of times in the past, but it’s always interesting to see a look at the device from a new angle. And the article does point out a couple of things I hadn’t known before, such as that sixty years ago, Jason Epstein invented the trade paperback format....

The Bookseller reports that a Nielsen Book study shows that the number of new books being published every year is steadily rising, due largely to the influence of digital and print-on-demand publishing. Of course, this figure comes from the ISBNs that Nielsen issues; if the number of books published without ISBNs (offered for sale directly via websites, local stores, or other means) has also increased, that might make it even greater. This puts me in mind of the old argument about how the Internet has “killed” the music industry, and the oft-heard retort that, no, it’s just hurting the...

David Peck, co-founder of the Mischief & Mayhem Books publishing collective, had an interesting piece in yesterday’s The Daily suggesting that the end of big chain bookstores may be nigh and deservedly so. His argument is based in the economics of bookstores and distributors, in which the retail and middleman companies take most of the slices out of the retail price pie, leaving the publisher with a small sliver to pay its own expenses (including compensating the author). Even the wholesale price of the books isn’t necessarily fixed, as publishers have the clout to pass their own discounts...

I mentioned earlier this month that On Demand Books’s COO said it was poised to expand placement of its Espresso Book Machines to more locations. Now we see how: Engadget reports that Xerox is starting to get behind the Espresso Book Machine in a major way, planning to resell, lease, and service the devices. It seems like a match made in heaven, given that two Xerox printers plus some automation is all an EBM really is. Xerox’s press release reports that Espresso is going to have two booths at Graph Expo 2010 in Chicago October 3-6, and that the...