Shakespeare in seconds: Instant book machine gets Google Books access; LA Times, 9/17/09

Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times; Shakespeare in seconds: Instant book machine gets Google Books access:

"Today OnDemandBooks, the makers of the Espresso Book Machine, announced a deal with Google Book Search for access to the more than 2 million public domain books in Google's digital files. If you've got access to an Espresso, Shakespeare's "As You Like It" can be yours in less than five minutes and for about $8...

With an Espresso, the books are first sold, then printed, inverting the standard publishing industry business model...

One place where you can find an Espresso is the Bibliotheca Alexandria in Egypt, which, in reinventing the old Library of Alexandria, is tying a very old shared intellectual tradition to this very new one."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/09/shakespeare-in-seconds-instant-book-machine-gets-google-books-access.html

Company's 'ATM For Books' Prints On Demand; Podcast [4 min. 13 sec.] NPR's All Things Considered, 5/28/09

Podcast [4 min. 13 sec.]: Rob Gifford via NPR's All Things Considered; Company's 'ATM For Books' Prints On Demand:

"The company that makes the Espresso calls it "an ATM for books." On Demand Books CEO Dane Neller says it's the biggest revolution in publishing since Gutenberg started printing more than 500 years ago. He says it will help keep paper books way ahead of electronic books, such as those available on the Amazon Kindle.

"Our technology now makes it possible for the printed page to move as rapidly as the electronic page," he says. "The printed book still remains overwhelmingly the dominant way books are read. I mean, I think the last statistic I saw worldwide, the electronic book is still less than a half percent."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104644575