In 1884, Minneapolis’ William Henry Fruen patented the first vending machine in the United States, which would serve mineral water for a coin.
Over the next 140-plus years, the vending machine has gone on to dispense sodas, snacks, sweets, iPads and even cars.
Now, in D.C.’s Western Market, near George Washington University, a new vending machine is selling something quite different.
LitBox is a vending machine that sells books exclusively by D.C.-area authors and was the brainchild of Washingtonian Lauren Woods.
During a conversation with WTOP, Woods said she was inspired to create the literary vending machine by a monthly reading series she and her family launched from their home in 2023. Woods and her husband, Andrew Bertaina, who teaches creative writing at American University, are both writers.
“We have five or six writers every month read from their books or works in progress,” Woods said. “There’s so many really, really talented authors in this area, and I kept not seeing them in bookstores, and so I thought we should do something about this.”
Woods said that it was important for her to put established authors right alongside people with smaller distributions.
On a whim, she applied for a grant with the Awesome Foundation, and won $1,000.
“I was kind of in a pickle, because it wasn’t quite enough to get me over the finish line, but it was enough that I knew I was responsible to finish it,” Woods said.
For the funds, the mother of four turned to Kickstarter, but didn’t realize you don’t get any money unless you raise the full amount of your campaign, which was $5,000.
“I, again, panicked once I set that and realized that I was probably not going to make it,” Woods said.
The writing community clutched up and came through, with over 75 people donating.
“I was just blown away by the support for this,” she added.
“The biggest costs were the machine itself, the shipping, the moving on top of the shipping, website, insurance and credit card processing,” Woods said in regard to how much is needed to maintain LitBox. “I think that with the big up front ones out of the way, there’s going to be a profitable way to do this. Bookstores somehow manage to stay in business, even if barely.”
The price of the books in the LitBox are the listed retail price plus sales tax. The least expensive book currently is $9 and the most expensive is a $28 guidebook.
Woods said going forward, she wants to have people from the local literary community recommend books.
“So that I can get outside of my own tastes and make sure I’m getting ideas from a lot of different people,” Woods said. “I’m also really interested in literature that opens worlds, builds empathy, allows you to occupy someone else’s mind for a little while.”
WTOP’s Jose Umana contributed to this report.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
