E-book Bellows

4 Nov 2025
Progress: Concept

E-readers, devices which use e-paper to display the contents of e-books, offer a number of advantages over their non-e equivalents. And yet, many people prefer paperbacks. Nothing quite compares to the texture, heft, and – I'll say it – inconvenience of a real book.

But perhaps the primary disadvantage of reading a book electronically is that it's difficult to get a feel for how long it is, and how far through you are. An abstract digital progress bar is vastly inferior to the simple protrusion of a bookmark.

Evidently, the missing feature of all e-readers is the addition of bellows.

When a book is loaded, the bellows inflate/deflate to represent its length. A short novella flattens it, an epic slog fattens it.

The internal mechanism would likely be a series of linear actuators, to ensure that the bellows are rigid when held.

E-readers are often paired with a case. In this case, a dual set of bellows would represent your progress through the book.

Restoring some of the impracticality of physical books, progress is made tangible by the transference of volume from one bellow to the other.