ATM for Books? Yes indeed. It's coming

I'm still banking on the ebook readers being bigger than this. The technology is advancing much faster these days, and Amazon's sold A LOT of units. They'll get cheaper the longer they're on the market, and like the CD and DVD player, the iPod and the cell phone, soon most people will have or want one.

I want one. I don't mind reading 'on screen', but my laptop's backlight causes eye strain. Kindle, Sony, Cybook - not backlit. Rather than look to buy a book in the airport, I can download one from the runway using Amazon's wi-fi. Don't even have to stand in line.

I don't think paper will ever go away - so maybe this machine will be useful for those few books I want in paper. I do like a nice collection of books by people I know.

Boston.com posted a video of the thing in action today. Still nothing I could find on the price of the books though.

(vid is 4:47 long)

What a great idea! Lot better than a Kindle, in my mind. You get a book instantly and you can put it on your bookshelf when you're done.

Except--the books are sorta crappy, and priced like POD books always are; very expensive.

TheRightEyedDeer said:

There's a list of EBM locations here:

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/our_ebm_locations.htm

Any AWers close by one of these new-fangled, sparkly things? Could you give one a try?

Click to expand...

I dont' know how I feel about this yet, but I'm willing to give it a shot. I'll have to make a trip to DC (about 40 minutes)

For those of you in the UK, Blackwells are currently giving the machine a trial in their Charing Cross store. I hear that it is doing very well, but have not been in to see it myself, as it is too much of a drag to get to London very often, and I am not a city person !

TheRightEyedDeer said:

There's a list of EBM locations here:

http://www.ondemandbooks.com/our_ebm_locations.htm

Any AWers close by one of these new-fangled, sparkly things? Could you give one a try?

Click to expand...

There's one a short walk from me at the University of Michigan Library. I think they turn it on and run it for audiences a few times a week.

Do people really want me to go watch it?

There are Expresso Book Machines at a lot of campuses.

It's pretty cool for things like readers for classes, but the books are not durable -- and unless you typeset the file and select the correct trim size, it's a raw dump.

From this year-old video of the earlier model machine (looks virtually the same), production costs are "a penny a page" (that seems pretty cheap to me!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q946sfGLxm4
But I'm guessing that's just the raw cost of paper, toner and supplies for the machine, not the amortized cost of the machine, the floor space it takes up, nor what a retail outlet will charge over and above those costs. The retail price could be quite high until there's one of these in every major bookstore, copy shop and office supply store.

According to this radio interview in February, "there's only nine in the world, this is one of only two in Canada riight now..." (of these types of machines, or of that particular model, or what?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LosUoiyUToQ

Lots more videos with this youtube search:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=espresso+book

Anyone ever think that "shareware" books might catch on?

Seems like e-books are getting bigger and bigger, and the one disadvantage to shopping online is that you rarely get an opportunity to really see what it's about, Amazon offers the "see the first few pages" thing, but that's pretty limited.

I could almost see people offering the first few chapters online as they're written (almost like a serialized thing) as a sort of preview, then if after 30~ pages you really like it, you could buy the full thing.

According to the list....the U of A here in Tucson will have one this year at their bookstore. Interesting. I may have to check this out. I will let you know what I find.

This is probably the greatest idea since people started to slice bread loaves.