How bookstores will be able to compete with Amazon.com -- the Espresso Book Machine (VIDEO)

July 6, 12:16 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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Back in Ye Olde Days -- when everyone listened to music on archaic devices known as tape recorders and had about six channels on their televisions to choose from and thought parachute pants and leg warmers were the last word in hip fashion -- if you wanted to buy a book, you headed down to peruse the shelves at the Bookstore.

When Al Gore unleashed the Internet on us, however, along with it came the Bookstore's Public Enemy Number 1 -- Amazon.com.

All of sudden, readers had a larger selection, cheaper prices, and the tomes were delivered right to their door. Bookstores have been feeling the hit ever since; without the flame of fanaticism lit in the heart of Harry Potter and Twilight devotees through this past decade, they would have been hurting even more.

For years now, doom and gloomers have predicted that, ere long, the Bookstore as we know it would soon become so rare, finding one would not be unlike sighting a giant panda in the wild. Of course, they're wrong: fiendish book lovers everywhere will never let their sacred temples of literary delight vanish from the face of the earth, so long as they have one hand to turn pages with. But now, devout readers will have one other reason to visit the Bookstore, and that reason might just be the thing that breaks Amazon.com's dominance on the bookish world -- the Espresso Book Machine.

The Espresso Book Machine is an incredible invention: the producers of the machine, On Demand Books, describe it as "essentially an ATM for books." The machine

prints, binds, and trims, on demand at point of sale, perfect-bound, library quality paperback books. These books, which have full color covers, are indistinguishable from other books sold in bookstores. A 300-page book can be produced in four minutes...for a cost of consumables of a penny per page.

So, it prints books -- what's the big deal? The big deal is that the Espresso Book Machine can make it possible for practically any book that has ever been published -- out of print, unavailable on Amazon.com, whatever -- to be printed and bound at your request quickly and cheaply. No more ordering a used book and waiting around to see if it it's dog-eared or missing the last chapter; no more paying shipping and handling fees that add up to more than you paid for the actual book; no more irritating 'This book is unavailable at this time' messages when you've found the book you've been searching for your entire life. With the Espresso Book Machine, you've got it, freshly printed and brand-spanking new, just for you. Mr. Gutenberg would be weeping tears of joy if he could see this.

But why take my word for it? Take a look at the Espresso Book Machine print a book before your astonished eyes here:

Who ever thought that we would live to see the day when a book could be printed on demand in less time than it takes for your mocha to be made at Starbucks? Unbelievable. And to think that it used to require years of painstaking work to produce a copy of ONE book. It's a wonderful world.

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Photo credits: ideaspropiaseditorial.com