By Adrienne Lee

For book-in-hand lovers, the crisp aroma that emanates from opening a just-purchased book is a must. The odor is probably catalogued in their brain’s filing cabinet of smells. Now double the intensity of that smell—a stronger familiarity of black ink and freshly cut paper—radiating from the perfect-bound paperback book that a machine prints, binds and trims on demand in about five minutes.

It is the only Espresso Book Machine in Texas and builds books one block west of the University of Texas campus. The University Co-op, which purchased the machine this summer, houses it at their custom-publishing division, Forty Acres Press, near the corner of 23rd and San Antonio Streets.

Fittingly called the Burnt Orange Book Machine, or BOB, it provides an alternative publishing outlet, especially for those in an academic environment.

“It’s an opportunity for UT all over,” said Chad Stith, the Co-op’s director of intellectual technology and course materials and a 21-year veteran in the college bookstore industry.

Stith, who said the Co-op had a version of a print-on-demand book machine about six or seven years ago that didn’t see much use, oversaw the approximately $150,000 purchase of the Espresso Book Machine. He said the Co-op’s been interested in the machine, which Time Magazine listed as one of the best inventions of 2007, for a while. When owner On Demand Books, LLC, released version 2.0 this year, Stith said the Co-op’s interest piqued enough to make the purchase.

“It’s a great opportunity for faculty and academics to produce work [they] may not have otherwise,” he said, adding that the machine has the potential to benefit students, readers, libraries on campus and local authors. It could be “revolutionary for publishing in some ways,” he said.

Who benefits?

For Larry Lake, the W.A. “Monty” Moncrief Centennial Chair in UT’s Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, the BOB allows him to publish his book, “Enhanced Oil Recovery,” as requests for it come in. Lake’s 1989 book went out of print in 2002. But Lake said he’s continued to receive requests for the book—not thousands, but hundreds, he said, enough to run off photo copies for requestors.

“It’s an old book, but [using the book machine] is a new way to put it out there,” Lake said.

Since Forty Acres Press started printing books on the machine this summer, “Enhanced Oil Recovery” has made its way through the machine at least 10 times, for a total of about 50 minutes. The printed result is a 550-page book perfectly bound to a specially designed four-color slick cover that’s still warm and a little tacky to the touch.

Writers and marketers have equated the machine to an ATM for books, but Lake compared it to a different contraption: a vending machine. Perhaps it’s a combination of both. Whether self-publishing, seeking books in the public domain or publishing out-of-print books, one can choose, within a set of options, the book that falls into the machine’s last-stop compartment.

“I think the BOB … provides an opportunity. It’s one more step in dismantling the old publishing model,” said Cliff Avery, a local aspiring author and member of the Writers’ League of Texas.

He said the “hurdles to getting published are tremendous,” though the traditional model is changing. Typically, if authors want to publish works, they must have an agent to serve as an intermediary with the publisher. A mid-list author also usually leads any marketing and promotion endeavors, Avery said.

The Espresso Book Machine seems to streamline publishing for authors of any genre or interest simply looking to have a bound, paperback version of their work.

“It’s a way for peope to walk in if they have content and not be judged,” said Forty Acres Press Production Manager Brandon Bross.

Bross said the book machine is best utilized for small runs of a book. Lake expressed the same thought, saying the machine is “for works with value without high volume.”

It’s for those who only need a few copies, like students preferring to have a printed version of their online course materials or textbooks; professors with research to publish or those such as Lake with out-of-print titles that remain relevant to teaching; graduate and doctoral students who’d rather present dissertations in paperback book form; authors such as Avery looking to self-publish the first edition of a work they intend to sell; and even book lovers whose local stores may be out of a favorite title that can be printed on demand with the book machine.

Stith said as long as the machine is being used, it’s paying for itself. In terms of Forty Acres Press’ ultimate goal, he summed up the University Co-op’s mission: “to leverage this asset to the benefit of UT and its community.”

Protection and publishing

Under U.S. copyright law, books or works in the book machine’s catalogue must either have the permission of the copyright holder to be included or must be in the public domain. Public domain titles can be loosely defined to encompass any published work before 1922.

If copyright holders allow their works to be printed, it is logged into the book machine’s proprietary software, EspressNet. EspressNet provides instant customer accessibility in which the book author, or copyright holder, retains distribution rights, sets the price and receives 100 percent of the royalties—the difference between production cost and retail price.

Additionally, through electronic repositories such as Google Books, Lightning Source and Flatworld Knowledge, Forty Acres Press can reprint millions of those public domain, backlisted or out-of-print titles, including textbooks. Forty Acres Press can also publish exclusive works from the University of Texas Press and University of Texas Libraries.

Libraries in both university and community settings, as well as independent bookstores, make up another primary market for the Espresso Book Machine. Dennis Dillon, associate director for research at UT Libraries, said the department considered buying a machine when it first came on the market. Determining the machine was better suited for a bookstore, Dillon said UT Libraries decided against the purchase.

“A non-profit bookstore seems like the best place for it,” he said, adding that he and UT Libraries were enthusiastic when the Co-op bought the machine.

Dillon said the machine’s existence in a college bookstore setting allows people at the University to know about the machine, increasing the potential for its use. And this potential for use allows UT Libraries to provide an even more wide-reaching service to students and the UT community.

“If someone needs a book today, we’d have the means to buy it from the Co-op … books that aren’t available anywhere else,” Dillon said.

How it works

Aspiring author Avery viewed the book machine in a presentation for the Writers’ League of Texas at the end of September. He said he was particularly impressed with the machine’s marriage of simple technology and unique mechanics.

On one end, an industrial-sized printer spits out the book’s pages, what production manager Bross calls the “guts.” On the other, a color laser printer prints the cover. When the user selects “Make Book,” the two initial pieces meet. The machine grabs the stack of pages and then roughs the edges and spreads the glue. The stack lowers to stick to the inside cover, where the two are clamped together. The final step—before the book slides out the shoot—cuts down the book’s edges to the user’s specifically chosen size.

“I thought it was extraordinarily clever,” Avery said. “It’s a very exciting concept.”

Jason Beatty, vice president of sales for On Demand Books, said sales of the Espresso Book Machine have been “excellent. The ball’s rolling faster and faster.” There are about 50 machines in operation worldwide, but Beatty said the orders continue coming in.

As of now, the downside of having the only machine in Texas is the lag time between parts breaking and getting a technician to Austin to perform repairs. However, Bross said the amount of time should decrease when Xerox officially teams up with On Demand Books in February, ideally speeding up repair time and possibly expanding the reach and capacity of the machine.

However, with electronic publishing becoming a steady substitute for the printed word, how is a machine like the BOB going to fare as a new technology that produces a seemingly antiquated product?

With the book machine, the assets are digial and the product prints on demand, and Stith said print-on-demand is a transition technology. He sees the BOB and e-readers running parallel for a while.

Beatty said On Demand Books is changing print-on-demand technology, but echoed Stith in anticipating room for both the e-reader and the book machine.

“I don’t think one will push the other one out,” Beatty said. “There’s a market for both.”

Survival

One CNET Asia article on the book machine raised the point: “Of course, those who argue that e-books are the real future, would suggest that the Espresso Book Machine, while impressively modern and forward thinking, is actually destined to become a relic before it has a chance to realize its potential.”

However, recent statistics in the college textbook publishing realm—the market the University Co-op ultimately focuses on—suggest that students aren’t yet interested in fully adopting or committing to the e-book option.

In a National Association of College Stores study of 19 college campuses conducted in fall 2009, 74 percent of students said they still prefer to use a printed textbook. According to a May news release, the division of the association that conducted the survey, OnCampus Research, also found 53 percent of students “were unsure about purchasing digital textbooks or would not consider buying them even if they were available.”

More recently, in October, the association conducted another survey that confirmed its previous findings. In last week’s Campus Marketplace, the National Association of College Stores’ weekly newsletter, OnCampus Research Manager Elizabeth Riddle said, “It seems that the death of the printed book, at least on campus, has been greatly exaggerated, and dedicated e-readers have a way to go before they catch on with this demographic.”

Despite the slow but increasing trend toward e-publishing and e-reading, there’s a consistent sentiment among those familiar with the Espresso Book Machine: “The future for the book machine is long.”

This means Forty Acres Press’ BOB machine will continue churning out bookstore-quality paperbacks.

“People like having a book,” Bross said. “That still means something.”

For more information about the Burnt Orange Book Machine, visit
fortyacrespress.com.