A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a project I'm working on that includes tracking down some oldish books. Many of the books were available for cheap in Seattle's many used bookstores, but there were three titles in particular that are out of print; I really needed them.

University Book Store's operator is a pleasant, shy woman named Tera who has spent a lot of time working for local poetry publishers Wave Books and Copper Canyon Press. And while Third Place has visiting hours for their machine, which is in a separate enclosure off the Third Place Commons food court (which makes sense for TPB's high-volume plans for the machine), UBS's book machine is unguarded, out on the sales floor around the corner from the registers for anyone to see. As we talked, Tera was interrupted several times by curious folks who wanted to watch a book get printed. While I was there, a family bought a copy of The Wizard of Oz for their son, and several people ordered books for the pure novelty of watching them being printed, too Tera's got her hands full.

UBS's plan for the Book Machine seems to be a little less ambitious than Third Place's—Third Place started a publishing company as soon as they got the machine up and running and immediately started taking on self-publishing projects, while UBS is still deliberating over a self-publishing strategy— but Tera has talked with a few small presses and she is passionate about promoting the device as a distribution avenue for them. She says a few publishers seem to be resistant, probably because the issue of quality control is taken out of the publisher's hands and instead depends on the skills of the 13 EBM operators spread across the United States right now. That really shouldn't be an issue for publishers; Tera published three out-of-print books for me—one right in front of me, in about seven minutes flat—and they were of fine quality. And they cost me 30 bucks, total. You really should go and check it out.