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The Espresso machine is ‘the slush pile’s revenge’—but how reliable is it? And will e-books displace it?
October 1, 2009 | 5:40 am
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By David Rothman
The Espresso Book Machine could alter the balance of power in publishing—increasing authors’ leverage. Old-fashioned distribution may not count as much.
But does anyone know how reliable the Espresso is?
Such a question comes up in the latest article on the machine—published in the Wall Street Journal. Excerpt:
“Printers are notoriously unreliable, and it will be interesting to see whether these new devices—possibly coming soon to a bookstore near you—will prove any better than those found in offices. The concept is an interesting one, but is it too late? Electronic book readers, like Amazon’s Kindle and rivals, are getting better. Yes, paper is still easier to read, but for how much longer?”
Related: Earlier TeleRead mentions of the Espresso machine. Also see Engadget’s writeup.
Video: Demo of Espresso machine as used to crank out Google-digitized classics.
Update, 10:42 a.m.: In line with Pond’s understandable curiosity, I’m going to email an Espresso-equipped bookstore and ask the people there to tell us what they think of the Wall Street Journal article. How often does the machine really break down? As for e-books, I myself think that the two technologies can complement each other, with E being used as one way to preview POD books. And why not this deal? Buy an e-book and get a discount on a POD edition.
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Comments:
I don’t know, sounds just like FUD to me. There are espresso machines out there in the real world, working. If this wsj flack were a journalist, he would have gotten in touch with some owners of the machines to ask them how well it works.
Newspapers are in a sad state these days. And Mr Murdoch wants people to pay to read stuff like this online? Sheesh.
Hi, Pond. I’m going to query a Vermont bookstore that uses an Espresso—and get some Real Life info to augment the WSJ’s.
Thanks,
David
“Printers are notoriously unreliable.” That’s a Luddite’s statement. In fact, printers are usually as reliable as the people who build, use and service them. if you don’t do all of those things well, your printer will have problems. Let’s wait until a technical source, or an actual user, weighs in on the build quality of the espresso, and leave the nonsense claims out of it.
“Yes, paper is still easier to read…” This guy’s full of Luddite statements, isn’t he?
That said, the Espresso may be a step forward in one area–providing individual copies of printed works–but it doesn’t come close to the economy of e-books.
While I haven’t had any personal experience with the Espresso Book Machine, my gut feeling is that the machine is a little too clunky and expensive to gain much popularity right now.
Maybe when the machines become more streamlined and the price comes down, I can see them becoming real popular, like in malls, airports and the like.
That said, I do believe the EBM is a step forward and another advantage point going to the author. This is like POD only it’s instant and the customer doesn’t have to wait for shipping. It has that ‘instant gratification’ factor that ebooks have.
Once I write my grand American novel I’d be very open to making it available on the EBM.
-Brad
On-demand book machines have, in essence, existed in offices and in copy shops like Kinko’s (now FedEx Office) for many years. For example, the departmental office of a University I worked for in the 1990s had a copy machine that performed collation, and next to it were binding machines. Holes could be punched in a stack of papers using one machine, and another machine could be used to bind a report or book. The velobind system used a plastic strip with prongs that were thermally fused to create a binding. A comb binding machine used a round plastic spine to create a document.
In the 1980s laser printers dropped in price far enough that wide deployment in Computer Science departments across the United States began. At that point it was possible to download a document in postscript format (this was before PDF existed) and create a paper report or book on demand. I did this occasionally for very long technical reports and for computer manuals. The bindings applied by end-users did not look as slick or professional as traditional commercial bindings, but they were actually more rugged and higher quality than cheap paperback glue bindings that yielded fly-away pages. In the 1990s when I ordered a book in a specialized area sometimes it would arrive with a comb binding, a wire binding, or a velobinding.
As more and more public domain titles were digitized in the 1990s I wondered why copy shops did not advertise their ability to create books on-demand from scans of out-of-print public domain titles. But the per-page charges of copy shops can lead to substantial prices when book length manuscripts are created. Copy shops did create “course packs” on-demand for professors by copying and combining chapters of books, and publishers started to sue them back in the 1980s.
Copy shops have evolved in the 2000s as shown by this sentence on the FedEx website:”From within your FedEx Office enabled version of Adobe Reader, you can send PDF files directly to FedEx Office for printing, binding, and shipping.” Also, uploading files for printing brochures, postcards, and manuals is now supported.
In 2002 the Internet Archive’s Bookmobile started rolling and TeleRead had an article about it. The Archive website describes the Bookmobile as follows: “It is a mobile digital library capable of downloading public domain books from the Internet via satellite and printing them anytime, anywhere, for anyone.” Thus Brewster Kahle was aware of the potential and trying to proselytize several years ago.
So what is really new about the Espresso Book Machine? It offers incremental advances: greater automation, perfect bindings, licensed content, and machine placement closer to the final recipient. It also appears to be setting an aggressive price point that is lower than traditional copy shops. Incremental improvements sometimes are the key to dramatic success. Copy shops could deploy machines similar to Espresso, and they have the infrastructure already in place to supply and maintain them. If browsing and selection of texts is performed online then the lack of book displays at copy shops would not impede sales. We might see combined bookstores and copy shops in the future. The bookstore-coffee shop hybrid shows that curious amalgamations are possible.