Commuters at Exeter St Davids station in Devon will now have the option to buy a book using a vending machine, after publisher Penguin Random House installed one at the train station.
The machine, which at the moment includes titles such as Taste by Stanley Tucci and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, works like a traditional snack or drink vending machine. Books are on sale for their recommended retail price.
Titles available will be changed on a regular basis, including a mix of new books and older titles, and will also highlight key moments throughout the year such as LGBTQ+ History Month, Black History Month and Cop28.
The machine has been installed thanks to a partnership between Penguin, Exeter Unesco City of Literature and Great Western Railway. Money raised will support independent bookshop Bookbag and Exeter City of Literature, which promotes literacy and celebrates books in the area. Penguin will split the profits between the two.
The installation of the machine, by Southwest-based vending machine company Graddon Vending, recalls the creation of the paperback by Penguin founder Allen Lane.
While on his way to London in 1934, after a visit to Agatha Christie, Lane stopped at the station book stall at Exeter St Davids and assessed the books on sale – magazines and reprints of Victorian novels – as being of poor quality and overpriced.
Deciding that people needed good books at a price everyone could afford, within a year he had founded Penguin Books.
Penguin Random House said it had gone back to its roots with the new machine to “ensure that Exeter’s commuters won’t face the same problem with the Penguin Books vending machine”.
Zainab Juma, head of brand at Penguin, said the machine is what Lane “would have wanted to see as he set off on his journey”.
Book vending machines are not a new invention. The first Penguin book vending machine was installed in Charing Cross Road in 1937, and dubbed the “Penguincubator”. At the time the books cost sixpence each.
A number of commercial companies also offer book vending machines, particularly geared towards schools, while countries including Japan and Singapore have been using them for a number of years.
In 2015, short-story vending machines were installed at Canary Wharf, dispensing one, three and five-minute stories free to passersby. Made by French company Short Édition, the machines covered genres including sci-fi, romance and children’s fiction, plus a specially commissioned one-minute tale by Anthony Horowitz.
