Espresso Book Machine: History and Key Facts

The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) was a print on demand (POD) machine created by On Demand Books. It printed, collated, covered, and bound a single book in a few minutes. The machine was invented by Jeff Marsh, a St. Louis engineer, and was licensed and sold by On Demand Books (ODB), a company co-founded by publisher Jason Epstein and Dane Neller.

First installed in 2006 and publicly launched in 2007, the EBM was small enough to fit in a retail bookstore or small library room, and as such was targeted at retail and library markets. The machine took a PDF file for input and printed, bound, and trimmed the reader's selection as a paperback book. Time named it one of the best inventions of 2007.

Machines were installed in bookstores and libraries in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Egypt and France, and ODB had 100 machines in the field at its peak. Wider adoption was held back by publishers' reluctance to make in-copyright titles available and by the machine's cost and floor space, and many owners came to use it mainly for self-publishing. On Demand Books went out of business in 2024, although some machines remained in use, including one at the Vancouver Island Regional Library in Nanaimo, British Columbia, which still offered public book printing in 2026.

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