Even today, with the book superstores taking over the markets of the smaller, homey bookstores, people have this experience every day. I’ve had it. You’ve had it. And why does it take them seven days to get a book in? You’d think that to make a customer happy they’d overnight it or send it Pony Express – something faster than their seven-day shipping.

But fear not, for your frustration is soon to end. What if there was a semi-magical machine in your bookstore that you could ask for your darkest literary desires, and with a whir and a click and a bunch of thumping noises it spat out – your book? In minutes, still warm, and with that fresh new book smell?

It’s not a genie, it’s Print On Demand, a new technology being pioneered by Xerox and other printing companies. Print On Demand kiosks, small standalone machines that you can operate yourself, are in development. The machine has a database of books, or an online database of books it can access, that includes hundreds of thousands of titles with cover art, proper formatting, and text. When you choose one and feed the machine your money (assuming it’s a public kiosk rather than a private machine), the machine prints the book, cover and all, then binds it, cuts it, and drops it in the slot to you.

Print On Demand isn’t here yet, at least not in public (there are some Internet Print On Demand companies right now using similar technology to print mostly out-of-print books), but it’s coming. It won’t kill your bookstore, but it will be a handy addition to it. And how nice, to be able to buy a book almost as easily as buying a Coke from a vending machine!