Imagine going into a bookstore and buying a book out of a machine. It would be like looking through a jukebox or an ATM where you would browse for titles. You would make your choice and wait for it to be printed for you right there. Sound like the wave of the future? That’s just what the Espresso does.

The Espresso is a $50,000 vending machine that can print, align, mill, glue and bind two books simultaneously in less than seven minutes with full-color laminated covers. The book ATM has an upper page limit of 550 pages but it can print in any language and even accommodate right-to-left texts. On Demand Books, founded by Jason Epstein and Dane Neller, is the company behind the Espresso though the technology was developed by Jeff Marsh, the advisor for On Demand Books.

To an extent the reading public is already familiar with the concept of printing books on demand. Places like Café Press.com and Lulu.com print books on demand and ship them to you. These books of course are mostly self-published. But these sites are also large enough to have garnered some attention and if they can do it why shouldn’t a machine in a bookstore?  

Where can you find one near you? Good question. Although it seems as if the World Wide Web is buzzing with this information the actual product seems hard to find. Linesay Irvine at the Guardian informs us that Blackwell’s, a book seller in the UK, will be the first of its kind to offer this service but not until the fall in an undisclosed location. Eventually Blackwell’s would like to install the machines in all of its 60 locations in the UK.

But what about the United States? In 2006 Emily Maltby with Fortune Small Business Magazine wrote that the product is “nearly consumer-ready and will debut in 10 to 25 libraries and bookstores in 2007” but I have yet to see one where I live. But you can find them in San Francisco at the Internet Archive, the New Orleans Public Library, the University of Michigan Library in Ann Arbor, and the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont.

There aren’t many locations and the Espresso book ATM still isn’t a mainstream feature. I think that this is because there is just something about going into your favorite bookstore and feeling the weight of a book in your hands; from the moment it catches your eye, to the feel of the bound pages against your fingers. The Espresso won’t replace the pleasure of browsing for a book but it might make it easier for you to get your hands on a title that you already had in mind.

For more details about the Espresso check out On Demand Books and watch their video.