Mini books, a short post about a new development on an old style of book publishing.
Mini books, tiny books or very small books have been around for generations. I have some tiny, ancient New Testaments and other Christian books that were printed before WWI and a small classic printed in the 1890’s.
However, all the small, tiny or mini books I have seen were printed in the same way as big books. The text was printed so that the book was held with the spine in the vertical position. The reader read the page on the left, then the facing page on the right then flipped the page from right to left.
That’s how most of us in the West have always read books. Until the arrival of computers, ereaders, tablets, and smart phones when we started scrolling on a screen to get to the next page.
In 2009, the Dutch printer, Jongbloed BV combined the two ideas to produce what it called “dwarsliggers” – mini books printed on very thin paper with pages flipped horizontally bottom to top not vertically right to left.
Jongbloed had traditionally printed Bibles and other religious books, so the concept was licensed to other printers. A number of other variants were launched but not all met with success. For more information visit the Wikipedia page.
Mini books come to North America
Now Penguin has brought the concept to North America. The New York Times reports that John Green is one of the first authors to be published in this format.
He has four titles and a boxed set available in the mini books format.
It makes a lot of sense, we have 3 generations conditioned to holding reading material in one hand and scrolling with the thumb. I am a member of one of two older generations who were already adults when we started reading more than lines of code on electronic screens. Many of us can read ebooks and I guess many older people will find mini books convenient – as long as we remember our reading glasses.
It’s a logical development to apply that method to a paper book. The use of very thin paper means that the book can be kept as small as a smartphone and new bookbinding technology allows the book to stay flat when opened.
It’s also a development that fits well with the trend to living in tiny homes, decluttering and downsizing. Read more about that in this post.
Conclusion
The development of
What ideas could you combine to come up with that might change the way we do things?
Leave your thoughts in a comment.
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