Imagine being able to pop into a bookshop with a request for a rare book and then supping on a latte for a few moments while it’s printed to order. You won’t hear the assistant say: “It’s out of stock but we can get it – it will take a couple of weeks.” Or worse: “It’s out of print, try a secondhand bookshop.”

The Espresso Book Machine (EBM), coming to Britain soon, is produced by an American company called On Demand Books. It offers a fascinating glimpse into the future of how we may buy books. There are five EBMs so far operating (four in America and another at the library of Alexandria, Egypt) but On Demand is “in advanced talks with a well known London-based bookseller to bring one to the UK on early 2008”, says Dane Neller, the company’s chief executive.

It works like this: once you have selected, say, an obscure noir novel, the EBM will go online to a partner publisher and download the files needed to print it. As these files are stored in scanned page form, the book can be printed in any language or alphabet it is available in, such as Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic, and can even incorporate monochrome pictures.

“Retailers will only need to stock bestsellers and perhaps hold a selection of titles for browsing purposes. Nothing will ever go out of print,” enthuses Neller. The cost of the machines producing a book is currently a penny for every two pages, plus the royalties where copyright or other legal rights apply, and the retailer’s commission. On Demand says that prices will soon tumble.

Perhaps so, but as anybody who works in an office will testify, printers have a tendency to go wrong – and sod’s law dictates this will happen on the day you are halfway up the queue waiting for one of these machines to emit a text you urgently need and have already paid for. Neller insists the Kyocera laser printer at the heart of his literary marvel was chosen for its reliability and that, with an occasional service, it will function well. But success will also depend on the quality and feel of the finished books.

“The whole point of building these five initial machines was to prove that the idea was viable,” he explains. However, the second generation of EBMs will go on sale late next year and, measuring roughly 5ft cubed, they will be far less industrial-looking than the current models (see a video of one working at tinyurl.com/yxlw95).

On Demand is also working with the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a nonprofit collaboration of cultural, technology and government bodies from all over the world that is building an online archive of multilingual digitised texts that are available, without charge, to everybody.

The OCA has already digitised 200,000 books ranging from Moby Dick by Herman Melville to Songs of Innocence by William Blake – and it is “scanning them in at a prodigious rate”, according to Neller. These titles are available to be printed by the Espresso alongside those On Demand has secured deals for from publishers. Last week the OCA announced it had signed up several US academic institutions to its project as they preferred its more open approach over the commercial restrictions that would be imposed by signing up for the free book digitisation services offered by Google or Microsoft.

Cynics would argue the days of print are numbered and that the ability to download books in a purely digital form to a laptop or a portable electronic-reader gadget are the next big thing. It is a proposition that Jason Epstein, co-founder of On Demand Books and former editorial director of Random House, disputes. “Printed books are one of history’s greatest and most enduring inventions. What needs to change is the outdated way that books reach readers,” he says.

He’s right, of course. InGear has seen various fancy electronic reader gizmos, but these are no use if you are trying to read in bright sunlight or you drop your pricey new toy in a puddle.

gear@sunday-times.co.uk