Now you can buy books from ATM machines
Google partners with Espresso Book Machine (EBM) which is like an ATM machine that can produce a perfect bound, top quality book in minutes. The book that the machine prepares for you is just like the one you buy from market. The printing of pages, printing of cover, binding and cutting, everything takes places runtime at that machine. You can order any book using the screen in front of you, whose soft copy is available, and get it printed for in few minutes. No need to visit book stores or wait for the shipment to arrive from the online book store. It’s easy, it’s economical and it’s cool.
The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is a product of On Demand Books and recently partnered with Google. The database currently has more than 2 million books in it and is expanding as a part of Google Book Search project. User can also give the machine his/her copy in .pdf form using CD or flash drive and the machine can print that too!
The Espresso Book Machine. Photograph: David Parry/PA
The machines gives a ATM feel and looks. Hopefully when they make it common in public it will have only a few portion visible to the customer, just like ATM machine. The printing cost is very economical, like a penny per page, however yet no official price is announced. As I write this article, there has been 25 location on which this machine’s been deployed. See the complete location list of EBM. Here are some of the remarkable features of the EBMs: (for a complete information about EBM visit this PDF file size: 1.4 MB)
- The trim size is variable between 8.25″ x 10.5″ and 4.5″ x 5.5″. So the publisher’s original size can generally be matched. Readers will detect no difference between the EBM copy and the publisher’s edition
- Binding: Perfect-bound (see video)
- Interior: B&W (with a color option at certain EBM sites)
- Page-Count: 40 to 830 pages
- Speed: A 300-page book in less than 4 minutes
- File format: Standard PDF for book block and cover. Books can be selected onsite, online, or even uploaded in person from CDs, flash drives, etc
This technology can completely change the book selling and businesses. A bookstore can have only one such machine and no books at all. Customer can come with his/her own PDF of book or can search from the database and print it at that moment and get a new, fresh smelling, book to home. If you still can’t believe in it, see the videos below:
