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A “physical Amazon” – is that an oxymoron?

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Came across something really interesting from OnDemandBooks today (warning: site needs compatibility view in IE8 to render).

These guys have an intriguing device called Espresso Book Machine (EBM for short).  Essentially, it’s an ATM for books.  A few thoughts on this: 

  • A really interesting long tail play
  • Sort of a “physical” version of Amazon.com – which I thought was an oxymoron until today
  • They have about 1MM titles – about half of which are public domain (i.e., no copyright)
  • User walks up, selects book, and pays
  • Machine sends payment upstream so royalties get paid to content owners
  • Grabs digital book file (today, a PDF)
  • Prints a physical book in about 5 minutes

As far as I know, they just do physical distribution and production of books right now, but it’s easy to imagine a payment / royalty distribution infrastructure and retail footprint getting put to other uses, as well…. :)  

Here’s a video to get a little closer look at the EBM:

A very interesting Software-plus-Services solution – combining software on the EBM with services over the internet.  Nice!

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