Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Cool site that prints classic books in poster form

I stumbled onto this site, Postertext, via a Twitter post and am fascinated by their posters. (PS- follow me on Twitter @mercbiz)

Postertext, a Toronto company, can print an entire book into a poster and depict a scene from that book. In many cases, you can even read the book in its entirety on the poster (if that's how you want to do it).

At right, courtesy of Alltop, is the Postertext depiction of the novel "20000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne.

Below left is a closer look at that "20000 Leagues" poster.

Postertext has a growing number of books to choose from, including "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austin, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Ulysses" by James Joyce (only the first 8 chapters fit), and Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." (Only the first 27 chapters).

If you like bugs, or Kafka, maybe you'll go for "The Metamorphasis" by Franz Kafka poster. Cost: $23.99 Canadian. Click here to see it.

Here's what Moby Dick would look like.

I can't decide which of the 27 current available posters I would like, if I were going to buy one. If you don't see a book you'd like, you can request it, and Postertext will let you know if/when they do it. I might suggest "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Catcher in the Rye" posters, just off the top of my head.

The company produces new posters monthly. The site says they are working on Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," "Grimm's Fairy Tales," and "War and Peace" (likely not the whole book will fit on a poster!)

Prices are in the neighborhood of $25 to $30 Canadian, which is roughly even with U.S. dollars at the moment. (1 Canadian dollar = 1.0302 US dollars)

One caveat, Postertext.com seems to be having some issues ... the site crashed while I was checking it out and then went offline. I see on their Twitterfeed (@postertext) that this is not an isolated instance. It appears that they're just having growing pains. Looks like they're working on it. Good thing, because I think they're going to be a hit with booklovers!

No comments: