Espresso Bookistas

"Even as people embrace Kindles and other gadgets for reading, bookstores are finding a market for titles printed in small custom batches," reports Dana Mattioli in the Wall Street Journal (8/27/10). "Of course the fun is being able to watch their book being made," says Barry Bechta of Oscar’s Art Books in Vancouver, which "has sold about 1,500 digitally printed books since it bought a special printer in March." Barry says that people like to gather around and watch the books as they are printed in-store.

For Oscar’s, and other smaller independent bookstores, the ability to print books on-demand provides a way to compete against the chains with bigger selections. Oscar’s uses the Espresso Book Machine, made by On Demand Books, which "partners with Google Inc. to get access to older so-called ‘public domain’ titles, and with Ingram Content Group Inc’s Lightning Source for in-copyright titles." The machine costs more than $100,000 and Google collects a $2 licensing fee with each book, while the fee varies with Lightning Source.

Because of the costs involved, profits are lower than with traditional books, but retailers feel it’s worth it "because the store is getting a sale it otherwise wouldn’t." The selection of current titles isn’t exactly comprehensive, either, but the on-demand demand is good and growing: "About four percent of books are currently printed digitally, but that’s expected to grow to 15 percent by 2015," according to Interquest. Some book publishers are also looking into on-demand printing, but neither Barnes & Noble nor Borders has installed printers in their stores — although Barnes does "about $20 million in annual sales for on-demand printing."