Blackwell publishing launched a machine today that can print and bind within five minutes a single copy any of over 500,000 titles on demand. They hope to increase the number of titles to one million by the end of the year. The machine, called “Espresso,” is the brainchild of American publisher Jason Epstein. Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings says “I like to think of it as the revitalisation of the local bookshop industry.”

According to the report at Guardian.co.uk, the machine can be seen:

printing over 100 pages a minute, clamping them into place, then binding, guillotining and spitting out the (warm as toast) finished article. The quality of the paperback was beyond dispute: the text clear, unsmudged and justified, the paper thick, the jacket smart…. Continue reading Gutenberg Reprieve or Quixotic Extravagance? →