Following up on a posting of the other day, about the Espresso Book Machine 2.0, this article about the device’s introduction at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., includes video of the machine, which has been nicknamed “Lurch” by store staff, in action. You can see all the machinations with a marketer’s narration (see below).
For those of you new to print terminology, a “perfect binding” does not mean a binding without flaws. Rather, it is a type of paperback binding that uses glue to hold the pages in place within the cover. The article does not discuss questions of how to facilitate browsing for more than one reader at a time, which I examined at length, but it does seem that the primary market has been self-publishers who visited the Northshire Bookstore to have copies of their own books published.
It’s my opinion that we will memorialize many events, even conversations, in printed form once efficient print-on-demand is available. That may be a bigger business than the eternal backlist business publishing envisions for P-o-D systems.