As predicted and discussed earlier in this blog, it’s looking more evident every day that the future of book retailing does not include large square footage brick and mortar bookstores. We predicted chain bookstores would mutate into smaller café type locations where you would shop for a book online and then order it and that it would then be physically printed in the backroom of the café in less than twenty minutes while you sipped your cup o’joe. Well, we were proven correct much sooner than even we thought it would happen.

Lightning Source in LaVergne, Tennessee is the largest print-on-demand printer in the world. It is also a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group which is the world’s largest book wholesaler. Lightning Source (LSI) is an Ingram Content company which focuses on increasing book sales for publishers with technological innovations and low cost and minimum risk “just in time” printing and distribution systems. On April 16, 2009 LSI announced the launch of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) in conjunction with On Demand Books.

On Demand Books, LLC is the owner of the Espresso Book Machine and was founded in 2003 by Jason Epstein, a renowned inventor with a sixty year track record in the book business. The Espresso Book Machine was named the best invention of 2007 by Time Magazine. For more information on this company go to www.ondemandbooks.com and read more articles by Newsweek, The New York Times, Fortune, and more from CNN and NPR.

This pilot program between Lightning Source and On Demand Books will literally change the way people buy printed books and even e-books. What this new system entails is you literally buying an e-book and downloading it to your iPod, PDA, laptop computer as a Microsoft Glassbook file from Ingram’s online catalog, or you ordering a book to be printed on demand in the back room through the Espresso Book Machine.

Believe it or not, the EBM prints, binds and trims perfect bound paperback books on demand at the point of sale. What this means is the end of large, space-wasting, inventory-storing mega-book stores. It is, after all, much easier to put ATM-sized Espresso Book Machines all over the place than it is to build large over-sized book stores. This amazing new innovation will make shopping for books and buying books much more convenient. Not to mention the novelty of having a book printed immediately and put in your hands hot off the press! No more dog-earred pages, no more fingerprints, broken spines, coffee stains or other signs of previous prospective buyers left behind on your book. Each copy is brand new.

Already planned point-of-sale locations for EBM’s include bookstores and libraries for starters. Coffee shops, cafes, universities, and retailers such as Walmart and Target will quickly come on board as well. About 85,000 titles will be available through EBM’s beginning in May of 2009. Publishers that are participating in the pilot program include John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Clements Publishing, Cosimo, E-Reads, Bibliolife, Information Age Publishing, Macmillan, University of California Press and W.W. Norton. In approximately six months the EBM retailing channel will be available to all publishers that use print-on-demand services through Lightning Source.

We predict this new in-store print-on-demand model will have a rapid and positive impact on book sales globally. For struggling publishers and retailers the EBM channel collapses the book supply chain, boosts backlist title sales, matches supply with demand, eliminates returns and powers new, high growth sales channels. This is a major leap forward for the publishing world that will definitely impact authors in a number of ways — all of them positive.