More on the Espresso Book Machine

I LOVE serendipity!

I wrote my column for today and posted it before I went to bed last night around 11 PM. As usual, I assigned the posting time of 12:04 AM.

A rainstorm woke me about four hours later. Since I was awake, I went into my study to re-read my post (I sometimes find typos I missed despite proofing a column before posting it).

I had suggested in my post for today that bookstores of the future would do well to invest in technology like the Espresso Book Machines (EBM), which can produce a printed book from a digital file upon demand. Peter Winkler had posted a comment that the cost of an EBM would be prohibitive for many stores.

Before going back to bed, I responded that Engadget claimed the price of the latest version of the EBM was $50,000, not the $100,000 that the earlier iterations cost. I also predicted that the $50,000 price tag would be halved in the next year or two.

As I was eating my English muffin this morning, I scanned the morning's copy of Shelf Awareness. It directed me to the New York Times online where--lo and behold--there was a story about the Espresso Book Machine, which is on display at the midtown branch of the New York Public Library until September.

The article said: On Demand Books is pitching the EBM, "which may eventually sell for $20,000 or more, principally toward the nation’s 16,000 public libraries and 25,000 bookstores. A 300-page book costs about $3 to produce with the machine. A bookstore or library could then sell it to customers or library members at cost or at a markup."

You can read the original post for today below this one. You can read the article in the New York Times here.

I hope this is a harbinger of how smoothly the rest of my day will go. {grin}

Thank you, New York Times.