Espresso Book Machine



The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) was a print on demand (POD) machine created by On Demand Books. It printed, collated, covered, and bound a single book in a few minutes.

Introduced in 2007, EBM was small enough to fit in a retail bookstore or small library room, and as such was targeted at retail and library markets. The machine took a PDF file for input and prints, then made the readers selection into a paperback book.

The manufacture of the machine has been discontinued as of January 2024 due to the closure of On Demand Books.

History
Jason Epstein gave a series of lectures in 1999 about his experiences in publishing. Epstein mentioned in his speech that a future was possible in which customers would be able to print an out-of-stock title on the spot, if a book-printing machine could be made that would fit in a store. He founded 3BillionBooks with Michael Smolens, an entrepreneur from Long Island living in Russia, and Thor Sigvaldason, a consultant at Price Waterhouse Coopers. At the time, Jeff Marsh, a St. Louis engineer and inventor, had already constructed a prototype book printer that could both photocopy and bind. Marsh was working on this project for Harvey Ross, who held U.S. Patent 5,465,213. Peter Zelchenko, a Chicago-based technologist and a partner of Ross in a related patent effort, worked with Marsh to prove the concept and also helped bring Marsh and other players together with several venture interests.

Ultimately Epstein, together with Dane Neller, former President and CEO of Dean and Deluca, licensed Marsh's invention and founded On Demand Books.

The first Espresso Book Machine was installed and demonstrated June 21, 2007, at the New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library. For a month, the public was allowed to test the machine by printing free copies of public domain titles provided by the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a non-profit organization with a database of over 200,000 titles.

As of January 2024, the company behind the Espresso Book Machine has been closed. However, some machines continue to remain in places that had purchased them prior to the closure of the company.

Distribution
The direct-to-consumer model supported by Espresso Book Machine eliminated the need for shipping, warehousing, returns, and pulping of unsold books; it allowed simultaneous global availability of millions of new and backlist titles.

EBM books were also available for distribution through Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Content Group.