Espresso Book Machine

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The Espresso Book Machine at the Salon du Livre de Paris in 2015. Xerox PUF, impression a la demande - Salon du Livre de Paris.jpg
The Espresso Book Machine at the Salon du Livre de Paris in 2015.

The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is a print on demand (POD) machine created by On Demand Books. It prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes.

Contents

Introduced in 2007, EBM is small enough to fit in a retail bookstore or small library room, and as such it is targeted at retail and library markets. [1] The EBM can potentially allow readers to obtain any book title, even books that are out of print. The machine takes a PDF file for input and prints, binds, and trims the reader's selection as a paperback book. [2] [3]

History

Jason Epstein gave a series of lectures in 1999 about his experiences in publishing. Epstein mentioned in his speech that a future was possible in which customers would be able to print an out-of-stock title on the spot, if a book-printing machine could be made that would fit in a store. He founded 3BillionBooks with Michael Smolens, an entrepreneur from Long Island living in Russia, and Thor Sigvaldason, a consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers.[ citation needed ] At the time, Jeff Marsh, a St. Louis engineer and inventor, had already constructed a prototype book printer that could both photocopy and bind. Marsh was working on this project for Harvey Ross, who held U.S. Patent 5,465,213. [4] Peter Zelchenko, a Chicago-based technologist and a partner of Ross in a related patent effort, worked with Marsh to prove the concept and also helped bring Marsh and other players together with several venture interests. [5]

Ultimately Epstein, together with Dane Neller, former President and CEO of Dean and Deluca, licensed Marsh's invention and founded On Demand Books. [3] [6]

The first Espresso Book Machine was installed and demonstrated June 21, 2007, at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library. For a month, the public was allowed to test the machine by printing free copies of public domain titles provided by the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles. [2]

Distribution

The direct-to-consumer model supported by Espresso Book Machine eliminates the need for shipping, warehousing, returns, and pulping of unsold books; it allows simultaneous global availability [3] of millions of new and backlist titles.

EBM books can also be made available for distribution through Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Content Group.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Publishing</span> Process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Print on demand</span> Printing business process

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EBM or Ebm may stand for:

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ebook Book-length publication in digital form

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The Kindle Store is an online e-book e-commerce store operated by Amazon as part of its retail website and can be accessed from any Amazon Kindle, Fire tablet, or Kindle mobile app. At the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, the store had more than 88,000 digital titles available in the U.S. store. This number increased to more than 275,000 by late 2008 and exceeded 765,000 by August 2011. In July 2014, there were over 2.7 million titles available. As of March 2018, there are over six million titles available in the U.S. Content from the store is purchased online and downloaded using either Wi-Fi or Amazon's Whispernet to bring the content to the user's device. One of the innovations Amazon brought to the store was one-click purchasing which allowed users to quickly purchase an e-book. The Kindle Store uses a recommendation engine that looks at purchase history, browsing history, and reading activity, and then suggests material it thinks the user will like.

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References

  1. Overview of the report on "Future of Books" CQ Researcher Blog. May 29, 2009. Retrieved 2011-07-28.
  2. 1 2 "First Espresso Book Machine Installed and Demonstrated at New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library". PR Web. June 21, 2007. Retrieved October 16, 2007.
  3. 1 2 3 "End of the line for books?". The Sydney Morning Herald. October 4, 2007. Retrieved November 21, 2007.
  4. Ross, H.M. "System and Method of Manufacturing a Single Book Copy". U.S. Patent and Trademark Office . Retrieved September 18, 2013 via Google.com.
  5. Rose, M.J. (July 17, 2001). "Twelve-minute Book Delivery". Wired . Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  6. About ODB: History Archived 2010-11-27 at the Wayback Machine , On Demand Books. Retrieved on June 3, 2009.