I went to the American Book Center in Amsterdam to meet Steven and Maria, experts of The Espresso Book Machine (EBM). The massive yet-still-portable printer arrived in the store in November 2010 – it’s first location in continental Europe because “Lynn Kaplanian-Buller, director of ABC, has connections with the founders of the EBM, she knows Jason Epstein,” according to Maria. Kaplanian-Buller said in a press release about the introduction of the EBM that “I have been dreaming about this moment for a long time.”
The Espresso Book Machine is an automated book-making machine. The EBM prints, binds and trims a perfect-bound, library-quality paperback book on demand at the point of sale. The machine is an invention of publishers Jeff Marsh and Jason Epstein, who founded On Demand Books in 2003, the company behind the EBM. Currently university bookstores and libraries are their main buyers. Epstein says, “There had to be a device that would permit you to receive a digital file on demand and create it in the form of a book.”
Located in the white room on the second floor, the EBM is surrounded by bookshelves. It is a considerably small machine and made of glass so you can watch every action. The magic began when the EBM experts started it up and the cover and pages were printed at the same time, then the pages piled up, the glue went on the cover, the pages were attached, the book was trimmed and finally slid through the slot, and Maria handed me the freshly printed book. Accomplished in only a couple of minutes!
Do many people order a book printed by this impressive machine? Steven answers that there are approximately 20 orders a day, though the number differs greatly, sometimes up to 200 orders a week. The orders consist mainly of self-published books. The experts have seen many different kinds of self-published books such as family albums, travel account, dissertations, booklets printed for special occasions by companies and lectures. Maria told me the story of a woman who cried when she held her self-published book in her hand.
Steven explains that the network of stores and libraries using EBM is growing, with Belgium and Greece showing interest lately, along with an expanding number of libraries and publishers who upload their collection. The publisher HarperCollins recently joined the Espressnet which could lead to more publishers following suit. “Now Harper Collins has joined other publishers might think that this could be interesting for them as well.”
Digital printing and therefore the EBM provides the solution to many problems of publishers and booksellers, where there are currently a glut of chain bookstores that mainly buy the same titles, especially bestsellers, while books are only for a short period of time for sale in a bookstore. These trends lead to a small variety of available books. Impacting this is the growth of the number of titles published each year and the competition with online bookstores that can offer more books than a physical store. Digital printing can be seen as a solution to these problems. The EBM enables bookstores to offer a collection of titles as large as online bookstores can and to print remunerative, small print runs of titles for a smaller audience than the audience for bestsellers. Digital printing can also guarantee that titles are available for a longer period of time. (S. Schram, Dutch Literary Publishing and Digital Printing, 2009).
The growth of the EBM network will sustain and the EBM will likely become a prominent feature in many bookstores, increasing the number of available books, such as niche titles, formerly out-of-print titles, and out-of-stock titles. You can go to ABC to admire the EBM and see a glimpse of the future of publishing and bookselling.
Link for information about the EBM of the American Book Center: http://www.abc.nl/frontpage/ebm/index.php?pod=Y