BoysMind Books Titles Now Instantly Available as EBM Books

I knew it would happen!

When our town decided to spend millions to replace an already-decent library, I thought “What a waste of money!” It seemed obvious to me a year or more ago that libraries, as we've known them, would soon be dismissed into obsolescence by emerging Print On Demand (POD) technologies. You'd simply walk in, tell the digital librarian what book you wanted, a few buttons would be pushed, and a machine would instantly manufacture a professionally printed and bound copy of the book for you. Instead of lending it, the library would sell it to you for a nominal fee. That would produce a revenue stream that supported the library, eliminating the need for public financing through tax millages.

Now comes On Demand Books of New York City, with their Expresso Book Machine (or “EBM”). Tell its operator what you want, the machine then goes online to fetch the PDF files, prints the book block and the cover, then binds them, and spits out a perfectly manufactured paperback.

Hmm ... wonder how long it will be before the EBM is turned into a vending machine. Wonder what the brick ’n mortar book stores will look like a few years from now.

Technology is certainly a destroyer for business models and careers. While we’re playing futurists, how about this ... nobody I know likes to read ebooks on a computer screen. Ever try sitting on the pot with your laptop atop you lap? For that, and lots of other reasons, that’s just not the same as holding a book in your hands. The EBM development is great, yet the machines are highly mechanical, and therefore most likely prone to maintenance problems. Beside that, what a waste of time and materials. What a load on the landfills! Wouldn’t it be great of someone developed a book-reader thingy that actually had the look and feel of a book? One that could download content via a wireless connenction to the Internet and receive requests and instructions via speech recognition (“go to”, “search”, “bookmark”, and so on)?

A word to the wise ... ODP beware! The life-cycle of your wonderful EBM is probably going to be short ... probably less than a decade.

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Wanna see how the Expresso Book Machine works? Watch the video:

BoysMind Books has accepted an invitation from Lightning Source, an Ingram Content company, to participate in their partnership with On Demand Books, thereby easily entering this new innovative distribution channel.

Where can you buy one of our books, instantly produced while-you-wait by the Expresso Book Machine? Right now there are fourteen EBM installations, with many more planned:

Now in service:

• World Bank InfoShop, Washington D.C.
• New York Public Library, New York, NY
• New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, LA
• Internet Archive, San Francisco, CA
• University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, MI
• Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, VT
• University of Alberta Bookstore, Edmonton, AB, Canada
• McMaster University Bookstore, Hamilton, ON, Canada
• Newsstand UK, London, England
• Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt
• Angus & Robertson Bookstore, Melbourne, Australia
• University of Waterloo Bookstore, ON, Canada
• Blackwell’s Bookstore, London, United Kingdom
• McGill University Library, Montreal, QC, Canada

Coming soon:

• Brigham Young University Bookstore, Provo, UT (2.0 beta test site)
• University of Melbourne, Australia

“Nothing endures but change.” said Heraclitus of Ephesus ... about 1500 years ago.
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