Vermont Bookstore Offers Books On Demand

Hoping to start a small-time bookstore revolution, a quaint Vermont bookery has taken a risk on new technology that it hopes will do for the the printed page what iTunes did for music.

The Northshire Bookstore in Machester Center, Vt. is the first independent bookseller in the nation to offer on-demand bookprinting, using an Espresso Book Machine or "Lurch," to crank out hard copies of digital selections from a massive online database of more than 85,000 titles.

Gone are the days of dusty, book-lined aisles and waiting for incoming book shipments. Customers at Northshire now have instant access to a catalog of books rivaling that of internet media giants like Amazon.com--without having to wait three to five days for the books to arrive in the mail. Customers now have a wider selection to choose from, and booksellers no longer have to keep huge warehouses of books, much of which ends up going to waste.

Although there are plans to expand the digital catalog to include millions more titles, Northshire has been most surprised by the number of customers who have come in to publish their own works, ranging from poetry collections to memoirs and the first work of a 12-year-old novelist. A few self-published books have become so successful that they have warranted multiple re-printings.

The new technology could be a much-needed breath of fresh air for mom-and-pop booksellers across the nation reeling from competition with large chains and billion-dollar online operations. "The idea is that soon we'll be able to print out any book that's ever been printed,'' Northshire Manager Chris Morrow told The Boston Globe. "That could really change people's image of the small bookstore.''

The small bookstore has already seen a bump in sales following the installation of the "ATM for Books," and Morrow has been invited to speak to other small booksellers at BookExpo America to kick off what may be the next great publishing revolution.

HT: The Stimulist

photo credit: ailatan's Flickr photostream (creative commons)