Flipback Books Make It Easy to Read with Just One Hand & Lit-Loving Moms Can So Relate

When you’re already toting around tons of kid gear, carrying a book to read isn’t always feasible, but you sure could use one during those back-to-back soccer games and while waiting in the school pick-up line. These new mini, pocket-sized flipback books could be the perfect solution to finally getting to finish a book.

Mini pocket books or flipback books originated in the Netherlands where they are known as “dwarsligger.” These tiny versions of regular paperback books, which are hugely popular across Europe, are designed to be small enough to fit inside your back pocket for easy carrying and are about the size of your smartphone.

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In order to make the books small, but avoid making the print impossibly tiny, the pages are printed landscape style instead of portrait. To keep the volumes small, the books are also printed on very thin paper, which BuzzFeed describes as “hotel Bible thin.”

While e-books have made reading on the go easier, author John Green, whose books are some of the first to be published in this new format in the United States, explains that it has its downsides, “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.”

So far, a handful of popular titles as well as some classics have been published in flipback style. They are currently priced around $12 and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Target.

—Shahrzad Warkentin

All photos: Amazon/Featured photo: Lucrezia Carnelos via Unsplash

 

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