Free Stories, Printed At the Push of a Button

Stories are shared many ways. They are recounted in books and magazines. They are read aloud around the campfire at night. They are randomly dispensed from standalone kiosks, doled out on strips of paper like grocery store receipts. What was that last one? Leave it to the French, with their love of Voltaire and Simone de Beauvoir, to revive literature in the era of fast news and smartphone addiction.

Short Edition, a French community publisher of short-form literature, has sold 150 story dispensers worldwide that deliver fiction at the push of a button. The publisher installed more than 30 in the United States in the past year at restaurants and universities, government offices and transportation hubs.

“Everything old is new again,” said Andrew Nurkin, a deputy director at the Free Library of Philadelphia, which installed a dispenser. “We want people exposed to literature. We want to advance literacy among children and inspire creativity.”

Here’s how a dispenser works: It is shaped like a cylinder with three buttons on top indicating a “one minute,” “three minute” or “five minute” story. ( That’s how long it takes to read.) When a button is pushed, a short story is printed, unfurled on a long strip of paper.

The stories are free. They are retrieved from a computer catalog of more than 100,000 original submissions by writers whose work has been evaluated by Short Edition’s judges, and transmitted over a mobile network. Offerings can be tailored to specific interests: children’s fiction, romance, even holiday-themed tales.

Short Edition gets stories by holding writing contests.

The company, which is based in Grenoble and was founded by publishing executives, set up its first kiosk in 2016. “We want to create a platform for independent artists, like the Sundance Institute,” said Kristan Leroy, a company official.

The dispensers cost $9,200 apiece plus an additional $190 per month for content and software. The only thing that needs to be replaced is paper. The printed stories have a double life, shared an average of 2.1 times, Ms. Leroy said.

“The idea is to make people happy,” she said. “There is too much doom and gloom today.”

Vending machines that offer ‘one minute’ fiction on paper strips.

The first dispenser in the United States was set up at Cafe Zoetrope, owned by Francis Ford Coppola, the film director and winemaker. At the time, the director said the stories had the allure of classic manuscripts. “I’d like to see the city of San Francisco put them everywhere so that while waiting for a bus, or marriage license, or lunch, you could get an artistic lift, free of charge,” he said.

That hasn’t happened — yet. Mr. Nurkin has high hopes for Philadelphia. The library may install dispensers at a courthouse and the airport.

Mr. Nurkin said of the concept: “It’s like a literary magazine. You don’t know what you are going to get. Who knows? Maybe you press a button and get a story written by your neighbor.”