Espresso Book Machine Serves Up On-Demand Reading

Have you ever held Walt Whitman’s 1897 edition of “Leaves of Grass” hot off the press?

Of course you haven’t and neither have we, but now, thanks to the Espresso Book Machine at the , which prints a paperback book in five minutes, you can.

The Espresso Book Machine, which was made by On Demand Books, offers library patrons instant access to over eight million titles printed in any language, and will allow Brooklyn authors to self-publish their work on site.

“There are over 130 languages spoken in Brooklyn, and nearly 50 percent of Brooklyn residents speak a language other than English at home,” said Linda Johnson, President and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library. “The Espresso Book Machine will allow library-goers to print and enjoy books in any language, and allow Brooklyn’s legions of authors to self-publish and see their finished work produced, hot off the press.”

The modern media marvel, which is already in 80 other locations worldwide, converts digital titles to bound and trimmed paperback books from two sources: in-copyright titles, made available by major publishers including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, McGraw-Hill, Hachette, Macmillan and O’Reilly, and titles that have fallen into the public domain and are made available as scans through the Google Books program.

Sitting on the ground floor of the library, the glass encased machine is hooked up to a Xerox printer which feeds the facsimile of any edition of any book from Google Books through a conveyer where it bounds and glues the pages together, slaps a shiny cover on it, cuts it to size and spits it out in a manner of minutes.

“For millennial media nerds, this machine gives us the same look, words and feel as the original print edition,” said Anderson Evans, a consultant for the machine and a student at The New School in Manhattan, where he is pursuing a Masters in Media Studies. “I can go buy the CD version of Rubber Soul, but now I can buy a facsimile of it on vinyl. It’s not the same as the first edition, but it sounds exactly like the original, and that’s what this machine does with books.”

He said that patrons who come to the library are able to access a specific edition of a book that they are interested in.

“Say you want the first edition of ‘The Tower’ by Yeats, you will have it on your bookshelf in minutes,” Evans said.

While Patch was at the library on Friday, two books were printed in two languages. Kate DiCamillo’s “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” was printed in English and “Breve Historia de Tartessos,” by Raquel Carrillo, was printed in Spanish.

A Crown Heights resident, Jason Das, came in to ask specifics about printing old comic books.

Specifically, he wants to print copies of comics by George McManus (like “Bringing Up Father”) and Winsor McCay (“Little Nemo”) and a couple of reprints of the comic strip Mr. Block, by Ernest Riebe, who was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World union (IWW).

“It’s a pain in the ass to read a comic book on the computer,” Das said, explaining that the illustrations, line art and words from 80 to 100 years ago will look great re-printed. “But text is text on paper.”

The Espresso Book Machine also allows Brooklyn writers to self-publish their work, and make their titles available for sale on the EBM’s worldwide catalog. Writers will be able to format, design and upload their book for printing into a physical book and will soon be able to convert the print file to an e-reader format.

“We just want to help people print their own books,” said Bronwen Blaney, a manager for On Demand Books, the company that created the machine, who was working the machine.

Self-publishing starts at $25, costs 4.5 cents per page and is $5 per book.

Facsimiles start at $8.99 for a book of 40 to 99 pages and goes up $1 for every 50 pages, up to $23.99 for an 830-page book.

“You may be able to buy a new edition of ‘Leaves of Grass’ or even find an old one, but getting the 1897 version of it right here means that you have something that no one else has,” Evans said.