A few weeks back I posted an article expressing my interest in the Espresso Book Machine, a contraption that can print library quality books in under five minutes. This thing made me incredibly excited; the EBM offers so much opportunity for both readers and booksellers and I wanted to know more.

My friend Nick Ruest, Digital Strategies Librarian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who I recently interviewed about his library’s Kirtas Scanner, hooked me up with his cohort Mark Lefebvre. Mark is Book Operations Manager at McMaster’s Titles Bookstore. Titles has an Espresso Book Machine and Mark is the resident EBM expert. Who better, then, to answer all the questions floating around in my brain about the EBM?

All photos courtesy of Mark Lefebvre.

BOOKISH US: What is your role at McMaster University? How did your background lead you to this position?

MARK LEFEBVRE: I am the book operations manager at the bookstore, which means I oversee the teams that take care of all aspects of book and book-related merchandise; namely the textbooks, general interest books, and custom published course material offerings (aka Custom Courseware).

I have been in the book industry since 1992 when I started as a part-time seasonal employee at a Coles on Sparks Street in Ottawa.  I quickly caught the “bookselling” bug and have worked as a bookseller since that time, at mall stores, big box stores, for an online bookseller and even as the person responsible for handling book-data feeds from publishers for Chapters/Indigo.

In 2006 I came to Titles Bookstore at McMaster University.  I saw it as a great opportunity to do two things:  Get back into the front line at a bookstore as well as allow me new opportunities to learn and grown, since academic bookselling is quite a bit more complex than the general trade bookselling environment I was most familiar with.

BU: Tell us a little about the Titles Bookstore. Is it just a student textbook store or is there more to it? How is the bookstore involved in university life?

ML: Titles is much more than your average campus textbook store.  Yes, we offer the full services of textbook and custom courseware materials that students need and which you would normally expect from your on campus bookstore.  We also offer a full range of stationery items, particular items students require for their labs and classes, a wide selection of giftware and general merchandise such as McMaster crested clothing, a very large microcomputer store with knowledgeable staff to help with all your hardware and software needs, including computer repair service drop-off, a specialized clinical/medical bookstore, as well as a selection of approximately 40,000 general interest books in our main location on central campus.  We also operate the on campus Post Office (the official Canada Post location at McMaster), we oversee locker rentals for the university, and we provide complimentary caps and gowns at the university’s convocation.

In terms of our General Interest books, with 40,000 titles in stock, prior to the big box retailer Chapters opening up in Hamilton in 1997, Titles was by far the largest general bookstore in the Hamilton/Burlington area.  (Your average sized bookstore usually stocks between 10,000 and 12,000 titles)

Titles bookstore is not just an on campus retailer, but we are an ancillary operation of the university.  Apart from the administrative and operations fees and rents that we pay to the university for various in house services and departments, we also give $750,000 per year to the university which go towards supporting student services.  $250,000 of those funds are channeled specifically into a scholarship funding program.

And of course, on top of the financial remuneration we offer that contributes to the quality of student life on campus, our bookstore, like most independent community bookstores, offers a cultural meeting place of minds.  We hold various author readings and book signings allowing folks on campus as well as in the local community a place to gather and celebrate literary achievements and exchange ideas.

BU: Let’s talk about the Espresso Book Machine at Titles Bookstore. How did this project come about and who is behind it?

ML: Managing textbooks has certainly changed, even just in the past ten years.  It used to be that we could follow our original mandate of “one book for every student” — however, the rising costs of textbooks and alternative models of behavior in students resulting in them not buying a book (by either getting a copy from the library, sharing with friends, other illegal methods of obtaining the materials or perhaps deciding to not obtain or use the textbook at all) means that we often ship in a skid of textbooks only to ship about half of them back a few months later.

This ongoing shipping back and forth of books, which is an industry standard and has been for a long time, is not cost effective.  It costs bookstores and publishers a great deal of time and effort.  The margin that bookstores make on textbooks and academic materials is typically only 20%.  Meaning that if a textbook retails for $100, the bookstore is paying $80 for it.  Somewhere in the 20% margin the bookstore also has to pay for shipping and handling as well as staff who are ordering, receiving and shelving the books.  Once it’s all said and done, a bookstore would be lucky if they are clearing 50 cents on that $100 textbook once all the bills and expenses are paid.

Our colleagues at the University of Alberta bookstore purchased an EBM, and we saw how they were able to create a new model of bookselling — one that reduces that back and forth timely and costly nature.  Of course, for our friends in Alberta, their shipping time and costs were dramatically worse, given that most publisher warehouses are in the Toronto area — so the benefits to them were even more obvious.

While we’re only about an hour away from most of the domestic warehouses in Canada, there is still a benefit to the supply chain model to NOT have to ship those books to the store, and to NOT have to return them.

So, while obtaining digital files of the textbooks with direct agreements from the publishers is one manner in which the EBM is being used, we are also benefiting from being able to offer small publishers and authors the opportunity to take advantage of amazingly low costs on short print runs.  Traditionally, to self-publish a book, you’d have to print upwards of 500 to 1000 copies to get a decent price.  With our EBM and the beauty of the POD model, the minimum print quantity to get a good price is a single copy.

Donna Shapiro, our bookstore director and myself spent a good deal of time investigating the EBM for our own business needs as well as a manner of creating a whole new revenue stream for the bookstore.  After some significant research, I developed a two year business plan for the EBM and we presented that to the VP of our department.

Since the EBM landed in November 2008 we have barely been able to catch our breath as new and exciting opportunities continue to come in to the store from folks interested in taking advantage of the services we can offer with the EBM.  That being said, we have barely begun to tap into the potential that this machine and technology will allow us in terms of our ability to special order POD books faster than any other method currently available in the market.

BU: What are the EBM’s specifications? How does it work? What hardware and software does it run on?

ML: This is a bit of a tricky question for me to answer because the EBM is continually evolving.  We have an EBM 1.5, and even at that our version of the 1.5 is significantly different from the 1.5 that the University of Alberta bookstore purchased a year earlier.  The reason is that with each new machine that was custom built for each client, the technicians and manufacturer were able to revise and fine-tune the specifications.  What they have ultimately ended up with is an EBM 2.0 that is even smaller, more efficiently designed and compact than ever.  And it’s very likely that this 2.0 and the slight modifications they will continue to make on this product (of which there are still less than a dozen of in the world) will allow it to continually evolve and expand (Click here for current specs on the 2.0).

So, that being said, the 1.5 EBM that we have at McMaster uses a Xerox 4112 for the black and white printing and a Minolta magicolor 7450 for the color covers.

The software that runs the machine was custom designed by a software technician at On Demand Books and runs on a Mac Mini computer.  We currently utilize a web browser pointing to a local directory on the computer to access our custom catalog of titles.  Using a secure login from other computers within our store’s network, our booksellers can access the catalog through their web browsers and add orders from the catalog into a que that is managed by the EBM operator.

One really nice feature is that the operator can modify books in the que in order to give priority to different print jobs.  IE, they might already have a stack of 50 copies of a particular title that needs to be printed for the next day and that they are working on — however, if a customer comes in and requests a special order from the EBM catalog, the operator can move their order to be the next book printed, ensuring the least amount of wait time for that customer.

Here is a high level look at how the EBM 1.5 works.  It basically takes two pdf files: One for the book’s interior (or “book block”) and the other for the cover which, when loaded to the EBM catalog, are run through a custom script that prepares them for the printing, binding and trimming process that each book goes through.

When the EBM operator presses the print button, the black and white printer produces the book block on 8.5″ X 11 ” pages and the color printer produces the cover on an 11″ X 17″ cover stock sheet.

The book block is collected at the far end of the machine while the book cover waits on the binding table.  When both files are ready for the next step, the operator begins the binding process, which drops the book block into a carriage which runs over a blade that disturbs the fibers on the edge of the spine, then over the glue pot which applies a thin layer of glue, and then onto the binding table where the cover is bound to the book block.  From there the bound book moves into the trimmer where it is spun around and the excess paper is trimmed from three sides using a hydraulic powered carbide blade.

In a nutshell it’s a three click process.  One click to select a title from the catalog, one click to begin the printing process and a third click to begin the binding process.

Our version of the EBM allows us the ability to print various trim sizes — from just under 8.5″ X 11″ to as small as 4.5″ X 4.5″

We can print books as low as 40 pages to as many as 550 pages.

The average speed of a 300 page book from the beginning of the print cycle to the final trim cut is somewhere in the realm of 3 to 4 minutes.

BU: From the video I’ve seen, operation appears very seamless and easy but are there any difficulties in operating the EBM? Does it fall victim to unexpected clogs? How quickly do ink cartridges or glue cartridges run dry? How is paper stored and how much does the EBM hold?

I think one of the best ways for me to answer this is to remind you that the interior book block printer on our particular model is a Xerox 4112.  So, anyone who is familiar with this particular model (or other high-end multi-purpose print and copy machines) would be familiar with the through-put

We have printed over 3000 books and changed the black and white ink toner twice since November 2008.  So we’re making approximately 1500 books on a single toner.

We have also had to replace the toner cleaner cartridge, drum cartridge and other similar standard items — no different than you would experience using a high-end office laser printer.

The colour covers are printed on the Minolta and we have only had to replace the full set of ink cartridges on that once so far.

BU: How are Titles Bookstore and the University Library connected? Is there any connection with the Titles Bookstore’s EBM and the Library’s Kirtas Scanner?

ML: Titles and the University Library are following similar purposes of being there to serve the academic mission of McMaster.  The on campus EBM and Kirtas partnership is one of the first times since I have been at McMaster that the bookstore and library have worked so closely on a particular project.  A collaboration like that can only benefit students, faculty and the greater campus community.

Because the EBM can take pdf files and print them and the library can use the Kirtas Scanner to create digital versions of the over 100,000 public domain titles currently existing in the Mills Library archives, this partnership is perfect and one that other campuses I deal with that have an EBM but don’t have a Kirtas Scanner are envious of.

Any of these public domain titles which were created to be distributed for free in the Library’s “digital commons” can be made available in the McMaster University Library Imprint — with a specific look and feel, and some complex “templates” that were created, customers can request trade paperback copies of these public domain titles.  We call them the replica versions of the original texts.

The first one we made available for sale was a signed first edition of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE.  Retailing for $15.99, customers have loved the fact that they could purchase a replica of this rare and extremely expensive edition for less than $20.

For Christmas 2008, we also had one of the first editions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL available for sale in the McMaster University Library imprint.  And even though we had also produced a very thin “no frills” public domain EBM version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL for $2.50, every single customer who purchased that story sought out the more expensive replica version.

We have done the same thing for other special occasions.  Classic “love” themed books for Valentines Day.  Classic replicas of Darwin’s works, spooky Halloween stories.

The beautiful thing about this partnership is that we are not only able to use the McMaster University Library imprint as a way of raising funds for the library (a portion of the sales of each of these books is paid over to the library through an internal transfer), but customers get to walk away with beautiful replica versions of timeless classics — and, in many cases, they got to watch the book they purchased being printed in front of them and hold the book, still warm, seconds after it comes out of the machine.

BU: How large is the titles list for the EBM and where do these digital titles come from? Could a student come in and print their thesis on the EBM? Similarly, could someone come in and print something they did not hold the copyright? What are the copyright issues involved with the EBM?

ML: The current list of available titles is not huge, though aggressive plans and beta-projects are in the works to offer EBM owners access to an incredible huge selection of titles through a custom virtual network called EspressNet.  The first round of offerings will likely be just under 100,000 titles.  Ultimately, that list can grow exponentially as more and more publishers sign deals with On Demand Books.

Currently, we have about 130 titles in our own internal database of EBM titles.  They are all files that we have manually created at the bookstore at McMaster and are either files created on campus (by the bookstore or library), or were files provided to us by authors or publishers.

Copyright is something we take extremely seriously.  Titles is licensed by Access Copyright and for over two decades now we have created course packs in which copyright clearances are all fully secured.  Printing books on the EBM is no different.  We take every effort to ensure that the creative copyright owners are paid for use of their work.

Yes, while we have welcomed students coming in to request that we print their thesis as a trade paperback, we have to continually remind people that we can only print works that are either in the public domain or for which the person requesting the work owns the copyright — ie, if you are the author or copyright owner of the work, then we can print it for you.  If you are not, then copyright clearance must first be secured before printing or even beginning to create a file for printing will begin.

For course adoptions where a faculty member has requested a book that is either out of print or in print, we have contacted them as the copyright owner and secured a contract and pre-determined fee schedule for copyright payment before we have printed the book.  In the Winter term of 2008/2009, we had 5 different textbooks printed on the EBM for 4 different courses.

The work involved in securing copyright permission to print a book is quite intense and something we reserve most of our time and energy for if it is an item required for use in a course being taught here at McMaster.

BU: The OnDemandBooks website advertises that the books the EBM prints are “library quality” paperbacks. Is it really archival quality? Does it depend on the paper/ink/glue used? Is the EBM really the future of printing books?

ML: Before we brought the machine in to Titles, I had visited the University of Alberta bookstore to check out their machine.  When I returned, I brought with me a book that had been printed on their EBM (a slightly earlier version of the 1.5 EBM that we now own).  When I put this book in a pile with about half a dozen other books that had all been purchased from publishers and printed via the traditional method, only 1 in 10 seasoned booksellers properly guessed which book had been printed on the EBM.

The average person is likely not able to tell the difference.  At the end of the day, if you look hard enough, you might detect a difference.  And yes, it does depend on the paper, ink and glue being used.

The EBM offers an incredibly good quality book in an incredibly convenient and unique fashion.  If it isn’t the future of printing special order books locally, it’s certainly a part of it.

BU: Personally, I am interested in the opportunity the EBM provides for the small independent press though I assume the cost of the machine is a bit restrictive presently. How do the costs per book compare between printing on the EBM and printing through a traditional printing press? Do you see the EBM, now or in the future, as a way for an independent press to print its publications or is the system and cost more geared toward consumer level point-of-sale distribution?

ML: I don’t actually see the EBM as being for small presses so much as being for a bookstore or place where people expect to find books. Given the manner in which it works, I wouldn’t think of it as being appropriate for a full-scale production press, but rather for one-off special requests.

Cost-wise, printing a book on the EBM is significantly cheaper than what you’d get using a traditional printer.  However, that’s for one-offs or extremely short print-runs.  Labour and time-wise, it’s a lot more cost effective to use a traditional printing press to do larger print runs.  What I haven’t landed on is, for the labour cost savings and for the per page costs, what is that properly defined sweet spot in terms of print run.  Is it 500?  Is it 700?  Something higher, something less?

So, as your question suggests, I see the EBM as more geared towards consumer level point-of-sale distribution.  For that, it’s perfectly ideal.

BU: What do you see for the future of the EBM, it’s role at Titles Bookstore, and it’s role at McMaster University? What are your predictions as the technology matures?

ML: I think that the EBM or a very similar product like it, is going to become the norm in many library and bookstore operations.  The fact is that people demand more and more choice, and providing more and more books with the limited space and money that most bookstores and libraries are operating with isn’t an easy thing to provide.

But having an EBM in the corner is certainly a way that a small town library or an independent local bookstore could actually conceive of being able to compete with the Amazons of the world.  Sure, you could go to Amazon and have a book shipped to you within 24 hours — but if you walk over to your local corner bookstore perhaps they could print that same book for you and you’d have it in your hands within about 15 minutes.

And while a really great search engine online and an automated “if you like this you might like that” optimization is a great tool for online browsing, one thing that I truly believe technology will not be able to replace is the friendly, knowledgeable and experienced booksellers that you encounter in your local neighborhood book shop.  Book stores, as I mentioned earlier, are not merely repositories to pick up books in — they are cultural meeting places, offering up serendipitous experiences of browsing and discovery.  They provide an atmosphere or learning, exploration and sharing knowledge and wonder.  Technology like the EBM and being able to produce books on demand will certainly add new layers to that culture and apply a whole new sense of wonder to the bookstore experience.

I talk often on this blog about digitization of books and where I think books are headed in the digital age. But I thought it would be more informative to actually ask someone who knows what they’re talking about when it comes to digitizing books. Enter Nick Ruest of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Nick is responsible for the university library’s digitization efforts and runs the very cool Kirtas automated book scanner. I asked him ten questions I had on my mind about the project; I feel better informed and hope you feel the same. All images courtesy of Nick Ruest. Enjoy!

BOOKISH US: What is the history of the Digital Collections project? Where did the idea come from and who spearheaded the endeavor?

NICK RUEST: Just to clear up some possible confusion, Digital Collections is the home for all of McMaster University Library’s digital projects.  The McMaster Collection is a collection in Digital Collections.  It contains some of the output of the mass digitization effort with the Kirtas scanner.  That particular project is called, “The Mass Digitization Project.”  It was spearheaded by Jeff Trzeciak, our University Librarian.  The Mass Digitization Project is lead administratively by Anne Pottier & Wade Wyckoff and technically by myself.

BU: What is your role in the project and at McMaster University’s Mills Library? What about your background lead you to the project?

NR: I am the Digital Strategies Librarian at McMaster University Library and I am responsible for all of the library’s digitization efforts and the overall library digitization strategies.  This includes setting up and maintaining digitalcollections.mcmaster.ca, maintaining our institutional repository at digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca, and the technical lead on any digitization project.

As for my background, I spent my undergrad years switching my major every semester and ended up with a degree in Political Science and a minor in History.  I was planning on going to law school, but decided not to.  A friend I worked with put me on to library and information science.  So, I ended up in library school.  Also, in another life I worked in the IT industry for a number of years.

BU: Tell me about the Kirtas scanner; how does it work, what does it run on, and what are its specifications? What are the difficulties when operating it?

NR: The Kirtas scanner is an automated robotic book scanner.  The model that we have is the Kirtas 2400RA – here are the specifications. Basically, the robotic arm, which has a vacuum head on it, swings over and picks up a right hand page, and drops it on the left.  There is an air blower that puffs on the right hand side pages in anticipation of the robotic arm picking it up, and clamps hold down the pages.  The imaging is done with two Canon 17.1MP cameras – the left camera takes a picture of the right page and the right camera takes a picture of the left page.  Software wise, the entire system runs on Windows XP and all of the controlling software is proprietary Kirtas software.  The machine comes with three computers, two standard PCs which control the cameras (one controls the robot as well).  Then all of the images are stored on a server (Windows 2003) where the editing and OCR’ing is done.

Obviously there are size limitations.  The machine can’t scan a book under 4.5″w x 7.0″h or a book over 11.5″w x 17.8″h.  Also, you have to vet the books that are going to be scanned.  If the text is too close to the gutter or the binding is really tight, the book can not be scanned.

BU: How is everything stored?

NR: The raw camera files, jpegs, tifs, and editing files are stored on the server the machine came with.  Then when a book is finished all files are backed up to our storage array.

BU: What kind of books are being scanned? Just ancient, rare, and one-of-a-kind books, or is the entire library being digitized? What are some notable rare books that have already been scanned into the database?

NR: We are scanning any books that are published before 1923 and that are in good enough condition to be scanned. Our conservator checks all materials that come from the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections.

Here are a couple of press releases regarding the project describing notable books that have been scanned: A Christmas Carol, Speculum Amantis/Love Poems and Others.

BU: Have you encountered any issues with copyright infringement on books that have yet to become public domain?

NR: Nope.  We only scan out of copyright materials.

BU: Let’s talk about the Digital Collections website. Is it limited to just students, faculty, and staff of McMaster or is everybody allowed to access it?

NR: Will will be offering all of the books we scan as Print on Demand at Lulu.com, Amazon.com, and Kirtasbooks.com. Additionally, this summer we should have a Scan on Demand list up on Kirtasbooks.com.  Users will be able to select an out of copyright book from our collection and have it scanned and printed on demand. Digitalcollections.mcmaster.ca is visible to all.  As for the McMaster Collection, we have stopped adding materials to it for the moment in order to focus our attention on creating an efficient workflow for the POD side of the project.  Once that is running smoothly, I assume will begin adding materials to the McMaster Collection again.

BU: Are other Canadian or US universities involved in this project? Is it a very popular project among libraries?

NR: No other universities are involved in our project.  However, there are quite a few universities and public libraries that own a Kirtas scanner – Toronto Public Library, McGill University, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University, and Northwestern University. Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

BU: It’s been just under a year since the launch of the project. Have you encountered any unexpected roadblocks?

NR: The only real problem with the project thus far has been editing the books.  It is a major bottle neck in the project workflow.  We are currently working on possible solutions to solve the issue.

BU: What do you see for the future of the Mass Digitization project?

NR: We are sitting on a large amount of scanned material right now, so we will be working on getting everything online.  That means Print on Demand versions for Lulu, Amazon, and Kirtas.  In the future we would like to get it all up online in a variety of formats.