Paige M. Gutenborg Makes Her Debut
Posted by Erin Brown in Bookselling technology trends on October 7, 2009
The Espresso Book Machine gained some major street cred last week when Harvard Book Store, a bastion of independent bookselling in a singularly high-powered college town, unveiled one of its own.
Jeff Mayersohn, a veteran of the telecommunications industry who assumed ownership of HBS last year, is committed to keeping the store on the cutting edge of bookselling. As Mayersohn said in a press release, “My vision is to provide our customers with any book ever written, in any format, and have it either in your hands or at your doorstep—the same day.”
Clearly the revolutionary book machine, brainchild of On Demand Books, is a giant step toward this goal. With access to an ever-growing catalog of more than 3.6 million titles (including 2 million in the public domain, thanks to a new partnership between On Demand and Google Books), the machine creates a library-quality, 300-page paperback in about four minutes.
The machine also has the potential to vastly reduce the book industry’s carbon footprint by eliminating the need for shipping and returns between publisher and bookseller—a benefit not lost on HBS, which offers its own bicycle delivery service to Cambridge and the greater Boston area.
Ah but “The Book Machine” seemed awfully sterile for a robot that promises to perform such marvelous feats and endear itself to all. So the staff of HBS launched a community-wide naming contest, avowing their weakness for outrageous puns and obscure literary references. More than 500 entries poured in, ranging, as marketing manager Heather Gain put it, “from absurd to acronym-happy to raunchy to plain hilarious.”
Ultimately it was “Paige M. Gutenborg” who made her debut on 9/29 and proceeded to wow a packed crowd with her capabilities.
Witty runners up included “Moby Click,” “Humpfry Bookart,” “H.A.L.” (for Harvard Automated Library), “The Gutenberger King,” and “Gutenplenty.” “Bartleby” was a strong contender, too, apparently, but who can afford a $75,000 machine that prefers not to?
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