... one technical possibility that was put forward at one point and that today is more controversial is that of print-on-demand machines. Jason Epstein argued in his contribution to text-e that this would be possible for certain kinds of books. What are your views about this prospect?

U. E.: I strongly believe in it. When Geoffrey Numberg, nearly ten years ago now, first told me about the Xerox project at Stanford, I immediately recognized the great possibilities of these machines. At the time it was only a question of money because a machine like that was very expensive and the possibility of receiving material online did not exist yet. What, then, would happen?

First, a book “printed on demand” is a real book: the difference is that, instead of coming off the printer’s press, it comes out of a computer. Second, it can be very “friendly” because if, for instance, I have eye problems I can ask the machine to print the book in larger or smaller type. Third, it allows for the recovery of out-of-print book; today if one wants a book, even a very good book, which was published thirty years ago, you’ll usually hear that it doesn’t exist anymore: the publisher hasn’t reprinted it because he knows that only about five hundred copies would be sold and that doesn’t suit him. Not only that, but there is a crazy law in many countries according to which the warehouse contents are taxed, so that if a publisher has a thousand books stocked there, each priced, say, € 1, he’ll be taxed for € 1000 even though in effect he’ll have lost, not made this money!

So: the print-on-demand machine would free publishers from the warehouse costs, it would give them the courage to take on new or avant-garde works, because they would not need to employ huge capitals to do so...

There are many reasons for which print-ondemand could be very positive, culturally and economically. I’ve said that I don’t prophesize, but if I had to make a science-fiction prophecy I would see a future bookshop that displays only the cover of the disk, just like in video stores, so you’d take that to the counter and request your printed copy. Maybe this is a little exaggerated, because the pleasure of the bookshop remains that of perusing the shelves, sniffing the book and so on. But a few pilot copies might suffice for the bookshop, even some printed-ondemand ones – so no printing press is required here either – and within five minutes the client would have the book.

My prediction is that Stephen King’s latest book would probably be printed because people would need to buy it in a hurry, like sandwiches, while if you wanted to read Thérese Desqueyroux by François Mauriac, which might be out-of-print, then you’d need to have it printed.