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"The makers of the POD Espresso Book Machine currently installed in fewer than a hundred bookstores nationwide, have announced new partnerships with Eastman Kodak and ReaderLink Distribution Services. Under the arrangement, the company's POD technology will be made available to retailers who have Kodak Picture Kiosks, currently installed in 105,000 locations according to Publishers Weekly, including drugstores and supermarkets. "

A fairly brief article that cites the benefits of on-site book publishing (supporting independent and creative authors), formatting and self-publishing academic material, and supporting in a limited manner a patron driven acquisitions model, offset by the machine's high price of $125-$150,000. I think it would be interesting to see numbers on printing volume and overall operating costs, as well as whether any leasing options are available for the book machine.

I'm glad to see the Espresso is starting to get press. It's been around for awhile, and has the potential to be very useful.

The article offers an interesting model of a "Book Place"-- a sort of combination library/bookstore of the future that offers things like printed books on demand if they're not in the store (thanks to the awesome Espresso machine and the 7 million titles it has on EspressoNet), and rental/subscription services for users-- including DRM free options for electronic media.

It is amazing what some libraries lend anymore. There is a library in Missouri that lends cake pans. I have seen some libraries lend power tools, guitars and more!

This is starting to sound like a science fiction story just waiting to be written.

I agree about curation. Since we're talking about science fiction now - which inevitably becomes science fact, in the not so distant future we will have desktop biological printers capable of "printing" a seed. Then libraries won't need to keep seed stores, they can just print any seed on demand if they have the DNA on file. Edit: Of course, that just means the e-resource vendors of the future will have another thing to try to license...

Really cool article that looks at : "Espresso Book Machines can offer two kinds of services: print-on-demand of any title available through the EspressNet database (which includes Google Books, the Internet Archive, all of Ingram's partnered publishers, and more) and self-­publishing services for authors and small publishers."

I sincerely love the idea of these book machines and have ever since they've become available. I don't know why every library doesn't have one (aside from cost).