Reading express

In eight minutes, InstaBook -- a machine the size of a dining room table -- printed a paperback book from a digital file, trimmed it, bound it, and put a cover on it. What I witnessed recently in Troy, N.Y., was simple yet extraordinary. It harkened back in time to neighborhood print shops while demonstrating the print-on-demand alternative to the publishing houses of today.

Eric Wilska and Susan Novotny, booksellers in Great Barrington and Troy, respectively, bought the InstaBook machine and launched Troy Book Makers this year in order to print self-published works as well as books, such as local histories, whose copyright has expired. They say they're hoping that the business is the wave of the future.

Their bet received a shot in the arm last weekend from no less a publishing luminary than Jason Epstein. A cofounder of The New York Review of Books , he has been on the cutting edge before. As a young editor in the 1950s he launched the paperback revolution. Later he created the Reader's Catalog, the precursor to online bookselling.

At a conference on the future of the book held in Boston, Epstein called print-on-demand machines "a kind of ATM or iPod for books." His company, On Demand Books, is backing the Espresso Book Machine, a rival of InstaBook. On Demand has selected the New York Public Library as a test site for its instant bookmaking .

He did, however, concede that publishers' reluctance to make digital files of books available is hampering his dream of a world in which readers can download practically every book ever written.

When Epstein was asked about the quality of self-published books, he expressed confidence in readers' ability to distinguish between the timeless and the terrible.

"It's not by accident," he said, "that we're left with Homer and Shakespeare."

Are domestic divas the new rock stars? Amy Sedaris, Martha Stewart, and Rachael Ray are all doing local readings to promote a new book, and the wristbands promised for their appearances, as well as the ticket policies, make you wonder.

Free tickets to see Sedaris at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge at 9:30 p.m., Nov. 9, are available at the Harvard Coop beginning Thursday with a limit of two per person. Stewart and Ray will be at Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center at noon on Nov. 12 and Dec. 20, respectively. Wristbands will be given out at 9 a.m. for both readings.

Historian Mary McAuliffe, author of "Paris Discovered: Explorations in the City of Light," will talk at 6 p.m. Thursday at First Parish Church, 3 Church St., Cambridge, about the Paris that eludes most tourists.

"All Mortal Flesh," by Julia Spencer-Fleming (St. Martin's)

"Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love," by Courtney Love (Faber & Faber)

"Provence A-Z," by Peter Mayle (Knopf)

Randie Farmelant, owner of Feed Your Head Books in Salem, recommends "I Want Everything to Be Okay" (Tugboat), by cartoonist Carrie McNinch: "Chronicling a year of McNinch's struggle with depression and alcoholism, the book is poignant and bittersweet. The reader accompanies McNinch through her alcohol cravings, her feelings of not being 'real,' her acupuncture treatments to calm her anxiety, and more."

Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.