Print a book while you wait

Antipodean Andy · Sep 18, 2008

Could be interesting once fully operational with the 10,000 titles. The way of the future?

Print a classic book while you wait | NEWS.com.au

CUSTOMERS will be able to print copies of hard-to-find titles in Angus & Robertson stores with the launch of its Espresso Book Machine.

The $150,000 machine - the first in a store in the world - prints, cuts and glues on a colour cover in seven to 14 minutes.

It is at Angus & Robertson's Bourke St shop in Melbourne, and 50 more machines are due in the next two years.

The self-printed books will cost the equivalent of the store's already printed books, but rare and out-of-print titles will be available.

One of the first books for the machine's catalogue is the out-of-print 1970 Miles Franklin Award winner A Horse of Air by Dal Stivens.

Also available is Lonely Planet's East Timor guide, not for sale any other way.

The technology will eventually let buyers make their versions of similar travel guides certain cities or activities.

Other books include classics such as Crime and Punishment, Sense and Sensibility and Wuthering Heights, as well as Australian books Eureka Stockade and Fishes of Australia.

The machine's catalogue had several hundred titles, but Angus & Robertson managing director Dave Fenlon said it would eventually have 10,000.

"We want to work with authors and publishers so we can resurrect as many books as possible that have been out of print and unavailable," Mr Fenlon said.

The machine - last year named the Invention of the Year by Time - would also help the environment, reducing the number of unsold books publishers pulp.

Meanwhile, writer Andrew Croome has won the $50,000 Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.

Document Z, based on the 1950s Petrov spy affair, will be published by Allen & Unwin next year as part of his prize.

Croome, 28, said he was "bouncing off the walls". "It really does present a great opportunity for writers to be assessed on the quality of their material rather than their publishing industry contacts," he said.
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Kitty · Sep 19, 2008

OOh I like that idea. Would be interesting if Persephone Books take up the idea.

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