The design agency Bureau has been working on a fascinating format for ebooks, trying for the benefits of high-craft fixed page layout in a scroll-driven, flexible-layout context.
Essay on their format (videos 2/3 through): bureau.rocks/books/manifest
Demo:
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Books are a sequence of "spreads", which have a fixed page number and a fixed page layout (possibly several to accommodate smaller screens). You can scroll continuously or use the keyboard to navigate through spreads. The spreads are contiguously stacked but each has its own URL.
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Ofc, looking at the specific examples here, there's no one technique that hasn't been done before, e.g. on NYT special longform pieces. But I like the systematization: those longford pieces have always been full-bespoke; I can imagine creating a library of spread templates.
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Their manifesto does a great job demonstrating the disaster zone that is e-book layout. bureau.rocks/books/manifest
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Other platforms which attempt a fixed page layout: e.g. on , here's Aurelius' Meditations: bubblin.io/book/meditatio. Bubblin scales the physical character size to keep a fixed text range on the page; Bureau will scale a bit but also permits spreads to involve scrolling.
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I confess, I don't love a subscription model for books, but I do understand the motivation here, and I'm glad to see someone trying it.
Thanks to for pointing Bureau's work out to me.