Instant Book

Every year, 140 million books are pulped in France, while millions of out-of-print, self-published or heritage works remain invisible for lack of a business model that would justify printing them. Founded by Stéphanie Roser, an engineer specialising in optimising industrial performance, Instant Book is developing a print-on-demand robot capable of producing any book in five minutes, directly at the point of sale. In just three square metres, a bookshop or media library becomes a universal library, with no stock and no unsold copies. The first two machines are running in Brussels and Strasbourg, and the company is rolling out its network with major French cultural players and with R&D Technology, an industrial automation expert for 30 years, to make forgotten books and copyright-free works accessible.