Anyone can order a book online with just a few small clicks, a one-time shipping fee, and 3-5 days of wait time. But in a century of instant facelifts, instant coffee, and instant access to any information your fingers can quickly type, we’ve come to expect nothing less than on-the-spot gratification.

Luckily, for bibliophiles everywhere hoping to secure the future of small bookshops now in competition with online retailers, the book industry is finally rearing its lovely, literary head. Spearheading one of most avant-garde contraptions since Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press in the fifteenth century, On Demand Books has partnered with Lightning Source Inc. to devise an Espresso Book Machine that allows consumers to search for a full-length book, click, and print the entire volume in the time it takes to order a latte.

The Espresso Book Machine merges the global reach of online book buying with the accessibility of purchasing books in-store. The EBM version 2.0, commonly referred to as an ATM for books in the form of a romanticized copy machine, is the second model of its kind, originally presented to the World Bank’s InfoShop in Washington D.C. in 2006. The latest version, currently residing in 18 locations around the globe as of May 2009, is faster than its predecessor.

The books in the EBM are stored as digital files in a computer database, using a software system called EspressNet, which connects the EBM to the vast digital library of books. Currently, consumers can access 400,000 titles on demand through the database, including those that are rare and out-of-print. Essentially, the book machine prints, binds, and glues library-quality paperbacks from 40 to 830 pages, infinitely variable in size from 4.5” x 4.5” to 8.5” x 11”. At 100 pages per minute, the machine can produce a full-length tome in a little over five minutes, a thrilling prospect for book lovers everywhere.

Espresso Book Machine in action on YouTube

But the benefits of the EBM are not limited to book enthusiasts alone. Established publishers will accrue higher profit margins because their titles can be obtained on demand. Aspiring novelists can walk into a bookstore with their manuscript on a thumb drive and watch through transparent Perspex walls as their work is sheared, clamped, and glued into a book indistinguishable from any other. Space restriction never need be a problem for retailers again, as their inventory will likely increase tenfold, along with customer traffic. Ultimately, the EBM reverses publishing’s existing print-ship-sell business model to merely sell and print, for the same price as any other book on a store shelf.

Few bookstores in the Southern California area, however, have heard of the Espresso Book Machine. “I’m familiar with the technology,” says Nancy, a Barnes & Noble manager. “It’s a good idea, but we haven’t heard much about it yet.”

News of the EBM is only beginning to surface. Andrew Pate, senior vice president of business development for the EBM, discussed the most recent developments in marketing the EBM to the public. “We’ve sold 8 machines recently and expect to have 10 more. We are working with National Association of College stores, have addressed the board of American Booksellers Association, and just exhibited the Espresso Machine at the American Library Association.”

Offering immediacy to what chairman of On Demand Books Jason Epstein calls a “decentralized digital future,” the EBM will not only make book buying instantaneously gratifying, but it will also reduce the number of books that are pulped or sent back if they don’t sell, reducing the carbon footprint. “It’s greener to ship electrons around the world and only have the atoms of a book locally,” Pate added.

It may be awhile before we’re able to walk into a bookstore anywhere in the world and print Legally Sane by Jon K. Hahn, or Promise Me Tomorrow by Nora Roberts, two of the most sought after out-of-print books in America, but the EBM is the all-time solution to book-buyer frustration, and is likely to become an indispensable product of the future for the ever-evolving book trade.