Powell’s Books, Portland’s world-famous independent bookstore, announced that its Burnside location would be launching its own publishing service. This is not just any old publishing service—customers will now be able to submit their book order online and have it printed in-store in minutes.
Powell’s Books, Portland’s world-famous independent bookstore, announced that its Burnside location would be launching its own publishing service. This is not just any old publishing service—customers will now be able to submit their book order online and have it printed in-store in minutes.
Instant book publishing has been made possible through Powell’s purchase of an Espresso Book Machine, or EBM. The EBM is the only digital-to-print book-publishing technology available on the market right now. Within minutes of receiving an order, the EBM is capable of producing a bookstore quality paperback with a color cover and in any standard trim size.
Content is fed into the machine via the company’s network, EspressNet. EspressNet acts like an iTunes for books, with more than seven million titles in stock at all times. EspressNet is able to retrieve, encrypt, transmit and catalogue books from various language sources. This is not limited to just public domain sources; EspressNet also provides access to traditional publishers as well as self-published authors.
Although the EBM costs around $100,000, it is a wonderful resource for book stores. Independent book stores like Powell’s will benefit the most from having an EBM. The EBM will aid in significantly reducing the amount of sales lost due to books being out-of-stock or out-of-print.
In a press release announcing the imminent arrival of the EBM, Chief Operating Officer Miriam Sontz said, “We are excited to offer this service to our customers, expanding our vast inventory at the City of Books location from one million volumes to nearly limitless volumes. It is yet another way we can be valuable and relevant to readers and authors as the distribution channels for books continue to evolve.”
While the EBM is a wonderful addition to Powell’s Burnside location, one must consider exactly what this publishing service is doing. When one orders a book, or when a bookstore makes a mass order, the books come from a publishing house with its own printing press or print house. The EBM eliminates the middleman, which, for the sake of customer convenience, is awesome. However, someone, somewhere is losing a job.
Powell’s deals with more used books than new, so the job problem is not as severe as with other businesses. However, we should still remain conscious of where what we buy comes from.
The best way for consumers to combat this would be to only utilize the services that the EBM provides when searching for hard-to-find or out-of-print books, then physically visiting Powell’s (or other independent bookstores) for more run-of-the-mill books. Basically, don’t go ordering your paperback copy of Twilight from EspressNet.
At the same time, the EBM proves something very important: real books are alive and well. With the rise of the e-book or “e-reader” in recent years, many people have expressed concern that printed books would soon be obsolete. In July 2010, Amazon.com, bane of local businesses everywhere, announced it had sold more e-books than real books in that quarter.
Many authors have expressed extreme dislike of e-books. Jonathan Franzen, author of bestsellers Freedom and The Corrections has stated in interviews that he does not want his fans to read his books via the Kindle or other form of e-book. While speaking at the Hay Festival in Colombia, Franzen said e-books were “not for serious readers” and “damaging to society.”
Last week, famous children’s book author Maurice Sendak made an appearance on The Colbert Report. When asked how he felt about e-books, the author of Where the Wild Things Are got all hot and bothered, saying, “Fuck them, is what I say. I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I won’t give a shit.”
Sendak is not the only author to make an argument (or angry rant) about e-books on The Colbert Report. Sherman Alexie, author of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and War Dances has also expressed anger with e-books. Alexie has refused to allow his books to be published on digital media.
On The Colbert Report, Alexie stated, “These digital books take away jobs, independent book stores are gonna go away, book pages are already gone away. It always amazes me that people who want to eat locally and live locally never think about buying locally, never think about the local value of a book.”
While one must remember that The Colbert Report relies heavily on satire in order to get the laughs, what Sendak, Alexie and Franzen have said begs a serious question: are e-books really the future?
As convenient as they are (you can fit a Kindle or Nook into a small purse or even your jacket pocket), nothing compares to a real book.
“I like real books because I can display them on a bookshelf. When I have company over I can say, ‘Look, I’ve read all of these!’” education senior Vy Dinh said.
Dinh is right: Not only are books aesthetically pleasing when arranged nicely, they provide one with something tangible to hold on to. Plus there is so much joy involved in going to Powell’s, not knowing what you want, and finding a new book to enjoy.
Powell’s does provide a selection of digital media on their website, but the majority of their business comes from physical book sales. If we don’t support our local bookstores, they’re going to disappear on us, and we’ll all be forced to buy our books from Amazon. That would be a travesty.
That being said, feel free to utilize this new publishing service Powell’s is providing, but be aware of what you are printing. If you can go to the Burnside location (or one of Powell’s many satellite locations) and pick up what you need, do it. And always, always (I can’t express how important this is) keep reading and keep the printed word alive.
