Tiny books for an art-o-mat machine?

January 30, 2020 2:44 PM

I'm fascinated by art-o-mats and want to repurpose an old cigarette machine to dispense free books. Is there any cheap way I could print public domain books that would fit into the machine? I'd be looking for books that I can buy relatively cheaply (since I will be giving them away) that would be 3 1/4" x 2 1/8" by 7/8".
posted by arnicae to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

ACLU has a number of wallet-sized "Know Your Rights" booklets.

Otherwise, zines templates seem perfect for this. Would this size work?
posted by veery at 2:51 PM on January 30, 2020

SuperiorPOD prints 2.5" x 3.5" books; at 16 pages with no laminated cover, they're $0.78 each. (Which seems like more than you'd want to deal with; that's not counting any money for design/layout, and the price goes up with page count.)

If you like the one-page zine format, there's the US Bill of Rights.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:11 PM on January 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don’t know about the physical side of printing, but I found some helper code to format Project Gutenberg texts nicely. You’d need a cigarette - box- sized layout definition. Someone here could help.

https://www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/

Or... having looked at the art-o-mat’s art.... print in long single columns and scroll them past a window in the cigarette box? It would use the box. Whole new construction problem though.
posted by clew at 10:44 PM on January 30, 2020 [1 favorite]