After Perseus Books creates and publishes a book from scratch at May’s Book Expo America using the Espresso print on demand machine, you may be convinced that the only thing instanter than books is Nescafé.

The publishing company will take a pre-written 10,000 word book and “edit, design, produce, sell, publicize/promote and publish live before fairgoers’ eyes,” according to Publishers Lunch and a Perseus release.

Though the project has some of the daredevil quality of a circus stunt (and there is no safety net if something goes wrong), the goal is to demonstrate that a combination of spanking-new digital tech and age-old editorial savvy can produce a work that exemplifies the future of publishing.

Where will the text for this book come from? It will, in Publishers Lunch parlance, be “crowdsourced”. Perseus is conducting a competition to “write the first sentence for a yet-to-be-written sequel to any book ever published,” with submissions via a website set up for that purpose. Copies will be run off on the Espresso at a launch party at Perseus’s booth on the Saturday afternoon of the BEA clusterfuss.

“By the end of the day Friday.” Lunch reports, “they’ll have a bound manuscript for reviewers and an e-galley as well.” Then…

“First thing Saturday they will design a web site and Facebook page, write a readers group guide, commence publicity and promotion, record the audio version, offer foreign rights, design and select a jacket, solicit accounts live and more. Booth visitors can watch the process unfold on wall-mounted screens and weigh in at specific stages, including an editorial meeting, and a jacket design meeting.”

E-Reads recently blogged about the Espresso, which one observer described as “an ATM for books”, and our production manager actually attended a demonstration.

“What we saw was a prototype the size of a squat refrigerator, with metal hydraulics pushing the paper around, whooshing and whirring as it shaved off the edges and glued the spine. Final shipping iterations of the Espresso 2 will use electric motors and reduce the noise. For now, the prototype’s pistons were all perfectly visible behind clear acrylic panels on the machine’s sides to demonstrate the mechanics. An inkjet printer on the top printed a color cover, a fast copier on the back printed out the interior pages, both of which get taken up inside and formed into a paperback while you watch. Then after a few minutes, out pops a little book from the dispenser, hot off the press (and a teensy-bit sticky until it dries).”

We’ll be in the throng at the Perseus booth, cheering Espresso – and the future of book publishing – on.

RC