What apps next? Publishers and developers embrace 'unprintable' fiction

Developers and authors explain how they are experimenting with technology to publish 'unprintable' books - including a love story told through Google street view and a prison break with swappable recipes

Publisher Anna Gerber isn't trying to kill off the printed book - she'd just like you to spend a bit more time on your mobile. "We don't really think the point is to change the way we read," she says, "but we do like the idea of trying to immerse readers in books on their phones."

Gerber has been pushing at the boundaries of the printed page since she and Britt Iversen founded Visual Editions in 2010, a publisher of mould-breaking books including Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes and Marc Saporta's Composition No 1. Now Visual Editions has teamed up with Google Creative Lab in Sydney to create Editions at Play, a publishing project and online bookstore that sells books that "cannot be printed", with each one available through Google Play.