F$#@ Kindle, This is Something that Will Revolutionize Publishing

It's called the Espresso Book Machine, and it prints books on demand.

It literally prints the book and binds it in about 5 minutes from an order.

If you were to integrate a scanner/shredder to do book "returns", you could eventually run a bookstore without any physical delivery, and only stock those books you sell, plus preprinting stock to put out on your shelves for the things that move faster.

Right now, it's primarily handling out of copyright works, but the manufacturer is looking to add in copyright works.

List for the machine is about $175,000.00, but that should pay for itself fairly quickly, if just by generating sales that take 5 minutes to deliver, as opposed to 2 weeks, so the customer goes elsewhere.

The big problem, of course, is that book publishers will insist that this new technology will require an even higher profit margin on their part, just like record distributors did with CDs when they came out, even though they were cheaper than vinyl.

Unlike Amazon's^® Kindle^®, they can't turn a book into a $359.00 doorstop because you have a billing or return dispute.

Of course, XKCD was all over this:

Or not, but it's funny.