Books You Can Read Like Swiping a Phone
As a physical object and a feat of technology, the printed book is hard to improve upon. 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 in New York, discovered “dwarsliggers” — tiny, pocket- size, horizontal flipbacks that have become a popular 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.”
Last month, Dutton 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.
If successful, the effort could reshape the publishing landscape and perhaps even change the way people read.
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). 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.
The mini versions of Mr. Green’s novels — “Looking for Alaska,” “An Abundance of Katherines,” “Paper Towns” and “The Fault in Our Stars” — will be sold for $12 each, or $48 for a boxed set, at major retail chains in America as well as independent bookstores.
Over the centuries, publishers have experimented with smaller paperback books, occasionally with great success. In 1939, Pocket Books introduced pocket-size mass-market paperbacks in America. During World War II, an effort to arm American troops with books gave rise to Armed Services Editions, little paperbacks that troops carried with them.
But in the last few decades, most of the pivotal advances in publishing have been digital, with the evolution of e-books and digital audio.
Some publishers have tried shrinking print books as a way to repackage backlist titles, to entice readers to buy new editions of books they know.
Getting English flipback editions of Mr. Green’s books proved complicated. The Dutch printer Royal Jongbloed is the only one in the world that makes them, using ultrathin but durable paper from a mill in Finland. Dutton’s designers experimented with different fonts and spacing.
“We’re in a situation where millimeters count,” Ms. Strauss- Gabel said.