New bookconcept in The Netherlands

looks like a book printed the wrong way up?
I'm just not getting what's so special about it?

...........

LIke I said, printed the other way.

so you get a very mini version of a book and then you have to hold it in what probably feels a really unnatural way. I have an English word for that!
Superfluous.

That'll never catch on. It's printed in gibberish!

I kind of like it, actually. But then, I also prefer using notebooks that flip pages that way rather than side to side.

smcc...lmao

I kind of like it. I can see where teens/young folks would use it like this. What with the IPods and such that are out. Interesting.

I'll stick to the old way.

It'll never catch on it's written in moon language.

Not a bad idea, but the concept doesn't work for really long books. They wouldn't fit in your pocket anymore.

Yeeeaahhh...I'd like to see how they'd handle the larger Harry Potter books, stuff from James Michener, ...And Ladies Of The Club..., monster books like those.

Why is this so innovative? What difference does it make to how portable books are?

scarletpeaches said:

Why is this so innovative? What difference does it make to how portable books are?

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My guess it has to do with reducing the size of a book but not shrinking the size of the text.

That can be done the 'right' way up, can't it? Or am I being stupid?

Besides, if someone's worried about portability, they can buy an eBook reader.

I can't see how it would reduce the size of the book but I'm liking the idea of it being able to lie perfectly flat. Why, of why are book spines so damn strong, and unbendy?

scarletpeaches said:

That can be done the 'right' way up, can't it? Or am I being stupid?

Besides, if someone's worried about portability, they can buy an eBook reader.

Click to expand...

The smaller you go with the size of a normal vertical page, at some point the text is going to have to shrink unless you want only a couple of words per page. This technique, using two horizontal pages to essentially create one normal vertical page, mimics the page size of a regular paperback so the text size is more like one, too. But you can't fold a paperback in half and stick it in your pocket.

Of course, now you're also stacking every page on top of each other instead of reading them side-by-side, so the thickness of the book doubles. Not so good for books that are already pretty long.

Besides, if someone's worried about portability, they can buy an eBook reader.

Click to expand...

I think it's a response to readers who want portability, but don't want to read on a screen. The technology/strain is still a concern for a lot of people.

I don't see any inherent reason why you'd fit more words on a page in landscape than in portrait. You might have a tiny bit fewer hyphenated words (fewer line breaks means fewer opportunities to hyphenate) but it wouldn't make much difference.

Some printing techniques require more white space in one direction or the other (depending on how the paper feeder "grabs" the paper), but it wouldn't make any difference in the overall amount of usable white space because you can feed the paper in the other direction anyhow. High speed printers usually feed the paper in the short direction and prints sideways anyhow.

So really you're sacrificing spine thickness for page size?

scarletpeaches said:

So really you're sacrificing spine thickness for page size?

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As far as I can tell, yes, except it's probably more related to text size (readability) than page size. In the name of portability.

Unless they're still reducing text size on already-thick books to keep those spines thinner, but then if that's the case I guess I don't get the point.

ETA: I wonder if they sell longer books broken up into parts.

Somewhere around here (in a box or something) I have this book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000HB12HM/?tag=absolutewritedm-20
(gee, glad I didn't sell it when it was going for $20!)
Here's a pic of the cover:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/tag/Boys'+First+Book+of+Radio+and+Electronics
It's in that format.

Also, in searching for info on the above book, I found this spiral-bound book, also apparently in the vertical page format:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0009F151O/?tag=absolutewritedm-20
IANAL, but it seems this would be enough to invalidate any such patent, or at least make it useless.

buttterflywilma said:

They are looking for an English name for this concept.

Click to expand...

Sleeper?

Landscapette/Landscapet/Landscap?



I love these games!

Emperor's New Concept?