Espresso Book Machine

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If you haven’t seen an in-store book printing machine in action, you’re in “luck.” I ordered a book from the Espresso Book Machine at the UW Bookstore in Seattle and took a really mediocre video of the process. Watch it here.

Handy with a camera, ain’t I?

The whole thing took about seven minutes, so I don’t think we’re at the place yet where book stores stocked their shelves with cover flats readers can carry to the register/print station. Not without 20 more machines running full time. And that doesn’t include the 15 minutes it needed to warm up the glue before the process could even start.

Also, there had to be a store employee operating the machines terminal for almost the whole time; I’ve done my best to edit her out, per her request.

Honestly, the most difficult part of the whole thing was taking my laptop out of the store to find a wifi signal, searching the specialized web site for the book I wanted to buy, and copying down the info I needed to take back into the store. Plus, the books were kinda spendy.

It’s early days yet.

I shot this over a year ago (Procrastinate? Me?) but ask questions if you have them. I’ll answer as best I can.

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