Time to put away your Kindles and iPads for reading? I'm excited by the news of an innovative new format for books. It has paper pages between somewhat more substantial covers, and you can easily pop it into a pocket or handbag for convenience, or hold it in one hand while reading. Even better, there's no recharging required, once you buy it you own it, and you can give it away or resell it.

This innovation – an ultra-small paperback on thin paper and set in a new font for clarity – will be called the Flipbook in English and will be launched by Hodder in June. They arrived first in the Netherlands in 2009, and are called dwarsliggers in Dutch. I love small books – perfect for commuting and delightful as artefacts in their own right. Now all I want is print-on-demand meets dwarsligger so I can get the latest economics books in that format.