The Wonderful, Evil Print-On-Demand Book Machine Arrives in Manhattan
Are there organizations we love more than local bookstore McNally Jackson? Maybe NARAL, or the SLA. So when we question the introduction of a Espresso Book Machine there, we do it with love. The EBM, the brainchild of Jason Epstein (AKA Mr. Judith Miller, among many other achievements), carries, in its current incarnation, about 3 million titles—trade books and out-of-copyright books. That's not bad! The New York City Public Library systems has more than 20 million books, but, you know, with them, you don't get to keep the books forever. Google Books, a main supplier to the EBM, has about 15 million titles; those are not all completely available books, as they're not all in the public domain. (And yes, according to Google, there are only 130 million books out there anyway, give or take.) So there are real benefits to having one of this machines around; this is why the Library of Alexandria (motto: only 2060 years since our last destruction!) has three of them, although most of us get our out-of-copyright books for free on our electronic devices now, you know, but I guess we can pretend that's not happening. What's most interesting is that the EBM is also an extremely regressive revolutionary implement.
While its nearly $100,000 price tag is reasonable—I mean, the thing prints books! In minutes!—and its $600 monthly "support and maintenance" fee is… semi-reasonable, what's less reasonable is that for every book it prints, the Book Machine kicks back to its owners, OnDemandBooks, $1.50 a book or 10% of the cover price, "whichever is greater." Aww, look! The book printing machine thinks it's a distribution network! Sure, historically, printers charge per book too. But they didn't make you buy the printing press first.
All this being said, it seems unlikely that McNally Jackson would be paying full retail price; OnDemand's offices are literally around the corner, and this kind of attention is good for them. Plus, OnDemand realizes that McNally Jackson also services writers, and a real benefit of having a machine right there on the edge of NoLIta is a stream of people willing to pay for self-publishing. The future! As you see in the video above, bookstores are also slowly becoming publishers. The second book published, via their new EBM-only imprint, at Village Books, in Bellingham, Washington? Village Books' Guide to Self-Publishing. At least it retails for just $7.95.
I've seen the books that thing makes. It ain't VIRTUALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE. It's sorta fun to print out really old random catalogs and stuff like that, but whatever is in there is in Google Books, right? And then you find yourself using the Google Books archive to search for things and blog them and in one sense it's the best of both worlds (I guess) (being, you get to hold the thing and then roll over and hit ctrl+F on your keyboard) but you can't help but think this whole thing was thought up by someone who doesn't really Get It and it's kind of some weird in-between thing for all the people who don't have e-readers (myself included, but). Also that's not even touching on all of the implications of, here is a fancy xerox machine! Print a book!"–both empowering and devaluing, blah blah blah. It's just kind of…silly? But fun silly! Like having one of those antique popcorn making machines at the movie theater just to stand around and take iPhone pictures of it.
When they put that photo booth in the K-Mart everyone thought they were Richard Avedon. Actually, maybe they were.
Hey, this gives me a great idea! Wouldn't it be awesome if you could go into a record store and get an on-demand 78 RPM copy of any song from the Hit Parade of 1923!? I bet millions of people would line up for this arcane service.
I was thinking laserdiscs of dancing women circa 1895.
What's worse is that this technology is state of the art for 1999. Epstein began working with an engineer named Jeff Marsh at about that time. I saw the on-demand book making machine Marsh built in 2000. The paperback books it produced were only recognizable as on-demand publications to a good print production professional. That was 11 years ago. The only thing that's changed in the interim is that people read less.
Diaspora Author: 10%! It can't be a real distribution vehicle unless it takes 90% of the retail price!
Self-published 'Author': the cool printing company that McSweeney's uses does it so much better!
MISS U HARPER STUDIO
I'm sorry but how desperate do you have to be for a book to need it printed on demand, rather than waiting the 24 or 48 hours it takes to have almost any title you want mailed to your home? Is there such a demand for immediate book publishing that these things are needed? Sorry but it just seems like a huge waste of money on a product no one is really asking for.