Espresso Book Machine Not About Espresso

The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) has nothing to do with Espresso or coffee, but everything to do with books. Print On Demand (POD) publishing has been around for a number of years, it’s allowed companies such as Lightning Source & Amazon’s CreateSpace to capitalize on the growing market of self & small business publishing houses by providing a gateway into the publishing business. I talked about my experiences with both companies a few months ago in this post. It’s also a way for publishers to keep out-of-print titles in print by bypassing the warehousing of titles.

According to Publishers Weekly (1/3/2011) there are only about 50 set up around the world due to its high cost. But places that have it have a leg up on their competition because the entire catalogue of titles available from industry leader Lightning Source is available to print a book within minutes on-site for a customer, thereby reducing the number of titles a bookstore would need to inventory. Lightning Source recently published its 100 millionth POD book and now has a catalogue of nearly six million titles.

Widespread use of the EBM may be years off but just the thought of sending a digitized book to a site across the globe and then printing a single quality copy, for purchase is astounding.

Here is a short video of the EBM version 2.0 in action: