Angus & Robertson Book shops have just launched the first Espresso Book Machine in Australia in a retail environment. They are talking of putting more in.
These are incredible machines.
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These machines printing cost are claimed to be about a cent a page. Printing time for a book is about 3 minutes. Consider if a typical book is about 500 pages, we are looking at production costs of $5.00. As cheap paperbacks now are $24.99 to the consumer, it could be a dramatic saving to them. It depends how good the printing quality is but it could make a major dent in the book market. What I like is its ability to print books that need to be specially ordered.
I have always thought there could be a demand for such a machine in a newsagency for interstate and overseas papers and magazines. The technology is all there but somehow it never happened. I know some ocean liners have such machines now.
