Source: The New York Times
August 2, 2007
And
Now, Folks, Behold the
15-Minute Publisher
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
In the Middle Ages, a book was a big production. It might take a year
for a monk to copy a manuscript, which is Latin for “written by hand,”
onto a specially prepared calf, sheep or goat skin and then to decorate
it with silver or gold.
In the mid-15th century, Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, sped
up book production considerably with the invention of movable type. A
single book page might take half a day, faster if workers showed
industry.
Today, the book business is faster still, but few things are as fast as
something called the Espresso Book Machine, the product of a high-tech
publishing venture that has nothing to do with caffeine.
Yesterday, in the lobby of a Midtown branch of the New York Public
Library, three visitors — a graduate student, a Hong Kong publishing
executive and a sixth grader — stood in various states of awe as a Rube
Goldberg contraption produced a book from digital code to hefty
paperback in under 15 minutes.
The book machine, which occupies the space of two deli-style ice cream
freezers, looks like office photocopiers attached to a tinted stereo
cabinet and computer terminal. It hums, makes spitting noises, moans
and then belches out a newly glued book, fresh as bread and almost as
hot.
The graduate student, Cyrus Luhr, and the executive, Gan Qi, requested
a business book, “The Long Tail,” by Chris Anderson; the sixth grader,
Leysly Avila, wanted “Moby-Dick” by Herman Melville, but there was a
problem in computer formatting, so she switched to “A Christmas Carol”
by Charles Dickens.
The book machine is a demonstration project of On Demand Books, a
Manhattan venture founded by Jason Epstein, former editorial director
of Random House, and Dane Neller, former chief executive of Dean &
DeLuca, the gourmet grocery store. The machine will be at the Science,
Industry and Business Library at 188 Madison Avenue until early
September, producing free books from a small list.
There are only three book machines in existence so far, Mr. Neller
said. The others are in Washington, at the bookstore of the World Bank,
and in Alexandria, Egypt, at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern
revival of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Mr. Neller’s firm is pitching the book machine, which may eventually
sell for $20,000 or more, principally toward the nation’s 16,000 public
libraries and 25,000 bookstores. A 300-page book costs about $3 to
produce with the machine. A bookstore or library could then sell it to
customers or library members at cost or at a markup.
Why bother? The machine, Mr. Neller said, is for the “far end of the
back list,” those books that are out of print or for which there is so
little demand that it would be too costly to print a few hundred
copies, let alone one.
With the machine, Mr. Neller said, anything available in a portable
document format, or PDF, including Grandfather’s memoirs and Ph.D.
dissertations, can be printed in minutes as long as a computer can read
it.
Books that are copyrighted and require royalties would need a
negotiated fee before they could be published, he said.
“But think what this means,” Mr. Neller said in an interview yesterday.
“It’s not just bookstores and libraries. This is small. It could go
into a Kinko’s, or a coffee shop, or a hotel or a hospital or a cruise
ship.
“A rare book available only to scholars, let’s say, would now be
available to anyone,” Mr. Neller said. “Let’s say you want a book in
Tagalog, a book in French or a book in Spanish. Think of the
implications for universal knowledge!”
In St. Louis, where the book machines are manufactured, Jeff Marsh, the
machine’s designer, said there was nothing insurmountable in its design
or testing.
“The big problem,” Mr. Marsh said, “was finding capitally sensitive
designs” — meaning inexpensive — “that allow for its use in bookstores.”
The major parts are off-the-shelf office photocopiers and
paper-shearing machines, he said.
A mutual friend introduced Mr. Marsh to Mr. Epstein, the former
publishing executive. Mr. Marsh, a former automotive engineer who
helped develop automatic braking systems, has no special interest in
publishing. “I just like solving problems,” he said.
Gan Qi, an executive with the Chinese University Press of Hong Kong,
said she thinks Mr. Marsh’s invention will help solve one problem.
“This will keep small publishers from going bankrupt,” she said.
Mr. Luhr, a Columbia University graduate student studying education
technology, wonders how the machine might affect the future of the
bookstore. “It can’t replace it because it can’t replace the atmosphere
of a bookstore,” he said.
As for Leysly Avila, 10, the sixth grader, visiting from Vancouver, she
likes the machine because “you get to see how a book is made.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times
Company
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