Bookstore in a Box

With the advent of electronic book readers a few years back, there was a lot of talk that e-books would eventually do to paper books what the iTunes system is doing to physical copies of records and CDs – someday everyone would just have a discrete electronic device that would have access to a huge library of electronic books in the space of a single volume. So far that hasn’t happened, thanks in part to the relatively high cost of both the reader devices and the e-books themselves, and in part to the reliability of actual hard-copy books. In a world where you have to worry about backing up almost everything repeatedly, it’s nice to own books in a format that never needs batteries and ignores magnets…

Now there’s a new device coming out that may give the old-fashioned book a new lease on life. A story featured on the Guardian UK Online site details a new technology called an Espresso Book Machine which is making its London debut this week. Essentially, it’s a high-speed automated printing system that can print, bind and cover a book in just a few minutes, connected up to a database of text files that currently includes about 500,000 books. If the company that makes it is successful in expanding their text library to the 1,000,000-plus books they’re currently talking about, that would give them the equivalent of over 26 MILES of bookshelves, or roughly 50 conventional bookstores worth, in the space needed for a large photocopier…

To me, that isn’t even the most mind-blowing aspect of the technology, however. Instead, let me call to your attention that not only can this device sell you any one of a million or so books, anytime you like, but unless the machine runs out of paper this (effectively) infinitely-large bookstore will NEVER RUN OUT OF A SINGLE TITLE…

Sorry for shouting, but anybody who has ever worked in Retail (or supply) can tell you that this is the single hardest aspect of running any retail outlet, and most other kinds of business, in fact. It’s certainly my single biggest pet peeve with conventional bookstores, which tend to have hundreds or thousands of feet worth of cheesy, ghostwritten celebrity vehicles and romance novels, but generally don’t carry even the classics in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Detective Fiction or any one of a number of other subjects I’d want to purchase – and when they do, are always out of whatever I wanted…

Then there’s the Independent Publisher effect. Until now, the main things preventing self-publishing from becoming a viable industry have been marketing and distribution; a lone author (or even a small publishing company) generally can’t afford to advertise their offerings to enough people to make any difference, and there’s no way for them to convince bookstores to give up the shelf space for their books. But with unlimited shelf space, and the ability to generate buzz over the Internet, this gizmo could do for obscure authors what the Radiohead Gambit did for musical acts…

It remains to be seen if these machines can turn things around for the brick-and-mortar bookstore, of course. As amazing as this device is, it’s still not as convenient as having books delivered right to your door by Amazon, and it’s expensive enough that most small booksellers won’t be able to afford one, which means it’s mainly going to be good for the big retail chains. But for the moment, it looks as if the humble book may be getting a new lease on life…