Making books is taking on a whole new meaning in Amsterdam, writes Joost Steins Bisschop.
This article was first published in the Financieele Dagblad this summer, and republished here in translation to mark the launch of the EBM.

In Amsterdam, the word “bookmaker” will soon take on a new meaning. The symbolic will make way for the real thing. An explanation is in order.
The Espresso Book Machine is a patented machine, a bookmaker that can print, bind, trim and cover in paperback quality. A 300-page book can be produced within four minutes. The basic production costs (paper and ink) are a penny a page. A 300-page book would cost about $3.00 to produce.
It is indeed an intriguing apparatus. A file goes in and a few minutes later a book comes out. In the most extreme case, all the books in the world will be digitalized (Google is scanning books hard and fast), and every manuscript that was ever produced somewhere will be able to be reproduced as a tangible book made of paper.
Indeed, it is a kind of promotion from file to book: no interface (smell, crackle, small tears, dog ears) is as beautiful as a book on paper.
The bookstore of the future is theoretically bookless. Instead, there will be a long table with monitors and an Espresso Book Machine. Visitors search for their book. A friendly information-providing librarian walks around to help with the search.
When the sought-after book is found in the database, and the customer wants to buy it, the book will be printed. The customer can pay online while it is being printed. Minutes later, he’ll leave the bookstore with a freshly-printed book.
In a more analog variety of the modern book store, there will be indeed be some books on the shelves, but the inventory will be just one sample copy per title. At purchase, the sample is returned to the shelf and the book printed.
All the “out of print” books will be available again. This bookmaker also makes it possible to print a book of one’s own manuscript in a print-run of, say, 10 copies. Another theoretical possibility: the reader buys an e-book, reads it on his e-reader and wants to have a paper version of it. Say he takes his Kindle over to the Espresso Book Machine. Surely, the publisher won’t object if he prints off just one hard copy for his own use?
In the theoretical future, no book inventory will be necessary, not even at the Centraal Boekhuis. The city of Culemborg will acquire an additional sports hall because the Centraal Boekhuis has shrunk to a hard disc with a few petabytes, the size of a doghouse with airco.
Holland has a European continental premiere at the American Book Center in Amsterdam. Every book hanging somewhere in “the cloud” can be made. Just as the magician conjures endless paper handkerchiefs from his pocket, the American Book Center will produce all kinds of books from the bookmaker. More books will be read than ever.
Joost Steins Bisschop is a columnist and senior consultant at Jungle Minds