Book Addiction: Curbing the Shakes After Hours
My name is Kimm and I am a book addict. It has been 35 years since I started reading books.
I started by checking out books in the library in elementary school. In middle school, I became a librarian aid so I could check out more books than was allowed. In high school, I started asking for books as Christmas gifts and I began to reread them at a rapid pace. Now, at 40-years old, I get books anyway I can whether it be freebies at sci-fi conventions or buying many from the trunk of my local dealer. It is an expensive addiction and my husband has even had to have an intervention with me about spending the money on bills instead of hardbacks.
Now, I sneak around behind his back to get my fix, but at night when I want to read something new and all of the bookstores are closed, that is when the literary shakes are the worst. What’s a smart girl like me supposed to do at one in the morning?
Luckily, someone is looking out for my future.
OnDemandBooks has created the Espresso Book Machine® also known as EBM. Imagine taking the machines that publishers and printers use and compressing it to fit in in a smaller machine that is slower, but more effective for a single publication.
The EBM can print cataloged books that have a soft copy available. (No hardbacks just yet.) Printed books include the pages, covers, binding and cutting. Basically, an exact duplicate of what you would get in a bookstore. The catalog is extensive… over 3.3 millions books and growing everyday.
Pricing is extremely economical… about a penny per page with a maximum of 830 pages. That amount is for the “paper, coverstock, toner for the interior, ink for the cover, and glue for the bind”. It takes about a minute to transfer the book from the catalog to the machine and a few minutes to print out average paperbacks. (Watch the demo below to see an example of printing and speed.)
There is another benefit to using this technology. It is environmentally friendly and they offer many benefits to publishers, writers, libraries, retailers and readers. Another benefit is that independent publishers and writers will reach a wider audience.
The one drawback is that there are very few of these machines in circulation at the moment, but that will soon change. Until then, I’m going to have to cure my cravings by rifling through the novels at 24-hour gas stations and airport gift shops.
