Say goodbye to out-of-print books and expensive special orders. “Lurch” is here to print you a book on demand.
A recent article on Boston.com highlighted the next wave in the ever-increasingly intersection between books and technology. “Lurch” is really the “Espresso Book Machine,” a new machine with print-on-demand technology that can create books for bookstore customers while they wait or browse.
Books can be printed from online catalogs, with about 85,000 titles available for the pilot program. The catalog is expected to expand in the coming months and while “Lurch’s” primary goal was to reprint books from the big publishing houses on demand, the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT has uncovered a different use.
The independent bookstore has a machine as part of the pilot program and quickly discovered that many customers wanted to use Lurch to self-publish. The machine can handle small loads, which makes it ideal for local authors who want to see their work in print. For a set-up fee and a per-page rate, anyone can have a printed and bound copy of their own self-penned novel or memoir. According to Northshire, even a local 12-year-old got into the act, self-publishing a YA book.
It will be interesting to see how Lurch and its brothers and sisters take on the whole e-book / Kindle side of the publishing industry. The whole Kindle industry still only accounts for a small percentage of the publishing world, so the real battle remains between the physical bookstores and those online. Lurch can give a leg up to the bookstores, especially independent ones, by (eventually) providing customers with the exact book they’re looking for.
I like the idea of print-on-demand, especially if it means not paying for shipping. But I wonder about the cost-effectiveness of the machine. The cost to own or lease one and operate it (which includes the cost of the raw materials needed to print the books) might mean that a printed-on-demand book is twice as much as a “regular” book. In the end, it might not saving the customer money or make the bookstore any money. It will be interesting to see how the pilot program plays out. (And I just might take a trip to Vermont to see Lurch in action!)
