Espresso Book Machine expected to roll out in UK

UK's The Sunday Times reports that soon the US based OnDemandBooks will offer its Espresso Book Machine to Blackwell, a chain of over 60 book stores in the UK.

I was quite impressed with the concept of the Espresso Book Machine when it debuted.

The machines are 9ft long, 5ft high, and allow customers to type in the title they want to buy. After about seven minutes, the book is printed out, trimmed and bound, selling for the same price as its shelf equivalent at the shop.

The fun in this machine is not placing it in a book shop! But anywhere where there is some space - like restaurants, tube stations, reception area of a large office complex - typically wherever vending machines sell crisps and colas. The machine needs an internet connection and has a nice touch screen interface for browsing the books and a credit card swiper to grab the money.

This may not still work in the Indian context for a while. Or, I may be wrong. Who knows? We may have a bunch of such machines placed all over India within an year or two.

However, when it comes to really printing on-demand books for physical distribution or internet ordering, this is not the machine. Solid heavy-duty Xerox, HP printers can offer for better pricing. Amazon's BookSurge offers a much better pricing than the 7c a page offered by this machine.