Printing a book in the McNally Jackson bookstore in NYC

Have you ever heard about the Espresso Book Machine (or EBM)?

In Italian, “espresso” means “expressly made” or “fast”. It doesn’t make coffee, but he does make paperback books, quickly and expressly for you. That’s right - real, live, toasty books.

Entering the bookstore, you’ll find the EBM near the bar, where you can ask to John to have your desired book printed (under your eyes, literally) in less than 5 minutes.

First thing first: the machine starts the job printing the front and back cover of the book.

It goes through an “Epson Stylus Photo R2000” printer which sits just on the side of the “big machine”.

After a few seconds, the big machine starts making some creaky sounds… what’s going on?

Whooaa! The machine has just started printing my book! How cool is that?!?

Less than 5 minutes after the machine created my 80 pages paperback book, impressive!

John told me he usually prints between 40 and 60 books on demand every single day.

Guess what? This looks quite promising!

The idea of “Km 0 books” is not bad at all, IMHO.

Bye bye polluting and expensive trucks, you don’t need to carry books around anymore!

What if everybody would be able to make their paper books available on demand in any bookstores of the world?

We’re working on that, stay tuned!

StreetLib.com