Photo: Eric Helgas for the New York Times
Tiny books, called dwarsliggers in the Netherlands, are the size of a cellphone and feature extremely thin pages that a reader can flip horizontally as if scrolling.
When I was a kid, I loved the Golden Book collections that the publishers miniaturized. I still have the set I got for my own children, and I notice that my grandchildren are drawn to the surprising size. So I’m guessing that a kind of tiny book already popular in Europe is going to take hold in the US, not just with kids.
Alexandra Alter writes at the New York Times, “As a physical object and a feat of technology, the printed book is hard to improve upon. Apart from minor cosmetic tweaks, the form has barely evolved since the codex first arose as an appealing alternative to scrolls around 2,000 years ago.
“So when Julie Strauss-Gabel, the president and publisher of Dutton Books for Young Readers, discovered ‘dwarsliggers’ — tiny, pocket-size, horizontal flipbacks that have become a wildly popular print format in the Netherlands — it felt like a revelation.
“ ‘I saw it and I was like, boom,’ she said. ‘I started a mission to figure out how we could do that here.’
“[In October], Dutton, which is part of Penguin Random House, began releasing its first batch of mini books, with four reissued novels by the best-selling young-adult novelist John Green. The tiny editions are the size of a cellphone and no thicker than your thumb, with paper as thin as onion skin. They can be read with one hand — the text flows horizontally, and you can flip the pages upward, like swiping a smartphone. …
“Mr. Green was already familiar with dwarsliggers, which he first saw several years ago, when he was living in Amsterdam (the term comes from the Dutch words ‘dwars,’ or crossways, and ‘liggen,’ to lie, and also means a person or thing that stands out as different). In the last decade or so, the format has spread across Europe, and nearly 10 million copies have been sold, with mini editions of popular contemporary authors like Dan Brown, John le Carré, Ian McEwan and Isabel Allende, as well as classics by Agatha Christie and F. Scott Fitzgerald. …
“ ‘Like a lot of writers, I’m a complete nerd for book making and the little details that make a physical book really special,’ Mr. Green said. ‘It didn’t feel like a gimmick, it feels like an interesting, different way to read.’ …
“Dutton and Mr. Green are hoping that younger readers from a generation that grew up with the internet and smartphones might be receptive to the concept of a miniature flipbook.
“ ‘Young people are still learning how they like to read,’ Mr. Green said. ‘It is much closer to a cellphone experience than standard books, but it’s much closer to a book than a cellphone. The whole problem with reading on a phone is that my phone also does so many other things.’ …
“Ms. Strauss-Gabel began her mission to import flipbacks to America this year, when she received Dutch editions of two of Mr. Green’s novels. She was startled by their size and ingenious design — the spine operates like a hinge that swings open, making it easier to turn the pages. She contacted the Dutch printer, Royal Jongbloed, and asked if Dutton could become partners with the company to print English editions. …
“But getting English flipback editions of Mr. Green’s books proved endlessly complicated. Jongbloed is currently the only printer in the world that makes them, using ultrathin but durable paper from a mill in a village in Finland. The first sample pages that Jongbloed sent looked cluttered, with letters and words crammed too close together. …
“ ‘I have no idea how people will respond to this,’ Mr. Green said. ‘They’re objects that you almost can’t get until you’re touching them.’ ”
More at the New York Times, here. I expect that one-handed reading will improve life in crowded subways, where commuters are likely to need the other hand just to hold on.
Photo: AbeBooks
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