McNally Robinson Booksellers is opening up a Community Classroom with the first classes commencing on February 1st. Offering small classes in a new, intimate, and aesthetically-pleasing classroom located within the walls of the Winnipeg Grant Park store, you will find captivating, content-rich courses, led by compelling educators that will help fulfill your yearning to learn. Register today as there is limited enrollment. Click here to get started.

"It's kind of neat to come and order a book and watch it being printed and have it in your hand almost immediately. It takes 3 - 5 minutes to print a book on the machine. I think it also says that people still want books." - Liz Treidler, bookseller at McNally Robinson.

CBC Manitoba Scene recently dropped by the store to check out our new Espresso Book Machine and watch it in action. They filmed a short segment with Liz as she walked them through the process of having a book printed.

You can read an article on the machine and watch a video of it in action online here.

An introductory post that goes into further detail about the machine itself can be found on our website here.

McNally Robinson has acquired a machine that manufactures a quality paperback book every 4 minutes or so. The machine is part of the bookstore, standing in the front window, and customers can watch books being printed and bound.

The finished book is hard to distinguish from books printed by publishers except for the fact that the paper used for print-on-demand is better quality.

The print-on-demand machine (called the Espresso Book Machine by its manufacturer, On Demand Books, because you can custom order like a specialty coffee and in about the same time), immediately addresses three niche markets.

First, self published authors can now print, launch and distribute through McNally Robinson, avoiding the difficult decision to print many copies without knowing how many will sell.

Second, readers and researchers can buy physical copies of out-of-edition titles, of which there are millions available to McNally Robinson through print-on-demand databases like Google Books and Lightning Source.

Third, teachers and professors can customize textbooks and print only as many as they have students enrolled.

In future, print-on-demand will meet mainstream demand. Negotiations are in progress to make publisher catalogues available for print-on-demand in independent bookstores, which would help shore up the physical supply chain.

The store can now print a book faster than anyone can deliver it from a distant warehouse, with no shipping and handling fees.

Self publishers can email enquiries to bookmachine[AT]grant.mcnallyrobinson.ca.

For more information contact Liz Treidler (453 0424 extension 242) or Paul McNally (955 1937)

As we told you last week, we've partnered with Google and are now able to offer eBooks on our website. I've downloaded a few and I'm very happy to report that it's pretty simple. Once you've clicked on the Buy the eBook button for the book of your choice and entered your address and credit card information, you quickly find your eBook in Your eBook Library on our site. From there you're a few clicks away from downloading it to Adobe Digital Editions on your computer (and from there to your eReading device) or you can click on the cover and start reading online right on your screen.

Give it a try and please let us know what you think. Email us at info@grant.mcnallyrobinson.ca and let us know what your experience was like.

For further help please see our help pages starting with our About Google eBooks page.