The printers are known as Espresso Book Machine (EBM) and are manufactured by US company On Demand Books.  Each machine costs around $100,000, with consumables costs to A&R of about $1.50 per 100 pages. The EBM runs a dual engine system, the black and white is a Kyocera while the colour engine is a Konica Minolta Magicolor, essentially the same engine as in KM’s C252 family.

The EBM prints off a 500 page book in around five minutes, a 300 page book in three minutes. The books are perfect bound with four-colour covers.

Angus & Robertson has announced plans to purchase 50 EBM’s as well as have access to 10,000 out of print titles in the next 18 months.

Books can be produced from digital or scanned files retrieved and transmitted via the internet by the company’s web based software to a nearby EBM where it may be retrieved in matter of minutes by the customer.

Angus & Robertson launched the first of the machines in Melbourne last month at its CBD store on Bourke Street. Currently there is around 200 titles in the catalogue that walk-in customers can access.

On Demand Books says the EBM printed books are perfect bound with four-colour covers at a quality indistinguishable from the factory made original. The trim size of a book is variable between 21cm x 28cm and 11cm x 11cm. An internal computer controls the EBM’s operation and provides a simple user interface for controlling print jobs and managing content.

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