Bookplanet: printing every book on demand from one $40,000 machine

2.5m digital books on one £25,000 machine -- by Rowan Walker/The Observer

A machine that electronically stores 2.5 million books that can then be printed and bound in less than seven minutes is to be launched early next year. It prints in any language and has an upper limit of 550 pages. The 'Espresso' will be launched first in several US libraries. The company behind the project - On Demand Books - predicts that, within five years, it will be able to reproduce every book ever published.

Niko Pfund, a publisher at Oxford University Press, said the evolution away from traditional bookstores was natural: 'For hundreds of years, the industry was unchanged, then audio came out. Now it's time for digital.' It is estimated that the books will cost less than 1p per page - but a machine of your own costs about £25,000.