Crime and Punishment in nine minu

They have been threatening to come for a long time. And now they are here. Matthew Moore of The Daily Telegraph reports: "A freshly-bound edition of Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic -- ordered by The Daily Telegraph -- was one of the first tomes to drop out of the Espresso Book Machine when it opened for business for the first time ..." (The printing itself of the 540 pages took only five minutes. The sheets were then sent into the binding section of the machine were they were pressed, covered, glued, and cut to shape in under four minutes.)

"And the results were impressive. The hefty work that skidded out of the chute, while slightly sticky to the touch, looked and felt like a standard edition, even down to the correct ISBN number on the back. The paper and ink are the same quality used in larger presses, and the binding appeared flawless."

The Blackwell bookshop on Charing Cross Road is offering that novel amongst 400,000 titles, many of them rare and out of print. This GBP 68,000 machine -- one of only three in the world -- is on a three-month trial. It allows readers to track down rare books, and also offers mainstream works that happen to be out of stock. Customers will also have the benefit of being able to load files from their own discs.

Printing cost? Apart from a set fee of GBP10.00 a book, there is 2p charge for every page. So Crime and Punishment would have cost GBP 20.80. (I am assuming this is for a paperback.) But what are the alternatives. One could order a copy of the book from Amazon.com, wait for a week and pay the shipping costs. Or one could have a cup of coffee, or browse through the shelves, or read something, or nip into the shoe shop next door while waiting for the book to be cooked. The other alternative is the ebook. But with a cost of over GBP 200.00 for the reader and another GBP 5.00 to over GBP 50.00 a pop for the titles, will it ever take off. Besides, the bragging rights associated with a well-bound (or any) copy of Crime and Punishment sitting on the bookshelf which are so much more, there is also the way they furnish your house and determine its character. So what are you going to tell your friends when they drop into your bookless house; that you have an electronic copy of Dostoevsky on your Kindle? Duh!

The Daily Telegraph