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:
