Espresso book machine and Lightning Source/Ingram tie the knot

Espresso Book Machine and Lightning Source/Ingram tie the knot

The Espresso Book Machine, the most eligible bachelor on the printers’ block, has just captured Lightning Source/Ingram, the queen of print on demand printing and distribution.

The Espresso, aptly named, is the first successful high tech book-making machine; in less than twenty minutes from the moment a buyer punches in the code for a chosen title, it delivers the book--printed and bound.

So you want coffee and a Danish, too?
You can have it. The vision for Espresso is to launch them in brick and mortar bookstores with coffee shops and reading lounges.

In the new alliance between On Demand Books (manufacturers of Espresso) and LSI, “Lightning Source will have access to the pioneering, patented technology developed by On Demand Books for its Espresso Book Machine™. On Demand Books will have use of Lightning Source digital conversion facilities and the right to print Lightning Source’s vast library of titles with publisher approval.

“The alliance provides a single site where content will be securely aggregated and accessed for printing on demand. Once the partnership develops, retailers and libraries will be able to rely upon Lightning Source as a single source vendor with uniform pricing and billing whether the book is printed centrally from a Lightning Source state-of-the-art POD facility, or printed at point of sale from the retailer/library’s own Espresso Book Machine™."

Another Amazon?
It doesn’t require much imagination to take the new On Demand/LSI alliance to the next step.

“A single site where content will be securely aggregated and accessed for printing on demand,” has a familiar look and feel of another amazon.com online bookstore for on demand books… and… (soon to follow), an Espresso/LSI ebook reading device similar to the Amazon Kindle.

Healthy Competition
According to the Seattle Times, "a new (Amazon) policy, announced March 31, says that "on-demand" publishers who don't use Amazon subsidiary BookSurge would not be allowed to sell their books directly on Amazon.com.

"The authors are fighting back with petitions to Amazon, the U.S. Justice Department and the Washington state Attorney General's Office.

"The office confirmed that its antitrust division has received about 140 letters regarding Amazon's policy."

Mountain to Mohammed
Since “Amazon has said that it doesn't plan to budge,” Lightning Source, the Goliath of on demand printing and the preferred company for products that many experienced publishers consider superior to the Amazon/BookSurge product, didn’t waste any time making a formal proposal to On Demand.

For more information about the Espresso Book Machine, click here.

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