A Novel New Way to Read Novels
If you ignored book printing conventions and started fresh, you might come up with something like The Scroller.
Why do books come in that book form factor? Individually printed and cut pages bound together in a big stack, with large margins, footers, and headers wasting space? That is almost entirely a result of the practicalities of writing and then printing at scale. But if you ignored all of that and started fresh, you might come up with something like The Scroller.
The Scroller is a very unique device, system, and format for books. The text is printed on one long piece of paper (thermal receipt printer paper), which rolls from one spool onto another. The reader can rotate a thumb wheel to scroll, which makes continuous reading possible without flipping pages. And because it cuts out the margins, footers, and headers, it condenses the entire book down into a more compact size.
Some of that compact packaging is offset by The Scroller device, which is like a reel-to-reel scroll in a 3D-printed shell. But even so, The Scroller is easier than a regular book to tuck into a pocket or a fanny pack.
To take advantage of this exciting new format, you’ll first need to 3D print The Scroller device. That’s easy to do and only requires filament and some inexpensive bearings. Then you’ll need a digital document containing all of the book’s text, which means it probably needs to be a DRM-free title. Using a thermal receipt printer, you print all of that text onto one very long piece of paper. As it is printing, you can spool the paper onto The Scroller.
Once the print finishes, just attach the other end of the paper to The Scroller and you’re ready to start reading!