This Awesome Vending Machine Offers Short Stories And Poems Instead Of Snacks

A small start-up company in Grenoble, France has conceived and executed an awesome idea: the Short Edition vending machine!

More: Short Édition h/t: art-sheep

The art of storytelling goes back more than 17,000 years to the earliest known place, the Lascaux Caves in southwestern France, where ancient stories are told through painted symbols on the walls of the caves. Short Édition is keeping this artform alive with their own modern innovation, attesting to the timelessness of literature.

The French publishing house’s Short Story Dispensers are delivering fiction to the public and breathing new life into the art of storytelling. The Dispensers are connecting readers across countries and cultures by publishing contemporary short stories, free of charge. This innovative design provides people with literary experiences in unexpected places: from airports to libraries, cafes, universities and Francis F. Coppola’s wineries.

So far, 8 machines have been installed around the city of Grenoble and offer the public 3 choices, depending on how much reading time people have to spare: randomly printed stories of 1,3 or 5 minutes from a wide range of genres such as adventure, thriller, drama, and romance.

What a great idea to help people kill time – and it’s free too! We can’t wait to see it taking over the rest of the world!