Shakespeare & Co. Is Printing and Selling the Redacted Mueller Report
“It's a good conversation starter,” the store’s general manager said.
A copy of the redacted Mueller report printed by Shakespeare & Co.’s espresso book machine | Photos courtesy of Rick Rollins
One of my favorite things about Philadelphia’s Shakespeare & Co. is its “espresso book machine.”
In just three to six minutes, the independent bookstore on Walnut Street can print (almost) any book you could possibly want, thanks to this glorious, steampunkish technology. The machine can even spit out your own personal manuscript. And this week, it’s cranking out copies of the publication everyone is talking about: the redacted Mueller report.
That’s right. If reading the report online (for free) isn’t good enough for you — if you want to jot down notes, feel its significance in the form of an actual, physical weight in your bag, use it to start damning conversations with strangers on the subway— you can now purchase a paperbound version at Shakespeare & Co.
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“It’s been popular,” general manager Rick Rollins said. “Some people really want to see where the redactions are, which pages are blocked out. A lot of people just want to have a physical copy to able to look at and bookmark — heck, we even had somebody who was taking notes as they read through it.”
Rollins said the book is more than 400 pages long and takes about five minutes to print. Since the report became available yesterday afternoon, the store has sold about 10 copies, he said around noon on Friday.
You can pick up a copy of the Mueller report for $15 now … and forever. Now that Shakespeare & Co. has the publication on file, Rollins said the espresso book machine can crank it out whenever. It will print right before your very eyes. If you’ve never visited the store and seen the machine in action, I highly recommend it.
Oh, and the best part? The store’s flipboard displays the title and author of each book it prints, as you can see. We’re guessing Robert Mueller’s name will be displayed quite often over the next few days.
The espresso book machine and corresponding flipboard. | Photo by Claire Sasko
