Unwritten

A bookshop of books that don't exist

Every day a customer comes to the counter with a handwritten note asking for a book nobody ever wrote: a novel whose hero is a forgotten umbrella, a phrasebook of Cat, a timetable of trains to stations that aren't there. You find it on the shelf, which is to say you write it. Only what surrounds the text, though: the title, the first line and the blurb on the back. The book goes up on the shelf, critics drop by, and a couple of weeks later a reader brings it back. Outside the window the time of day and the weather are the real ones. Free, no ads, no account.

English · Русский · Changelog

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How it works

1. The customer. One note a day, from a catalogue of 420. Some notes come with a wish:

   • the whole book in a first line of six words;
   • only its table of contents;
   • no letter «e» anywhere;
   • only how it ends.

   The bell on the counter calls another customer, up to three times a day.

2. Finding the book. Three lines are enough: a title, a first line and a blurb. You can add more:

   • a pen name and an epigraph;
   • the contents;
   • a page from the middle and the last line;
   • how many pages it has (that sets the width of its spine);
   • «see also», pointing at another book of the shop.

3. The cover is drawn in code in one of four styles:

   • a framed classic series;
   • a three-band paperback;
   • pulp with a halftone and a price tag;
   • typed samizdat with staples.

   Every cover carries the name of your own imprint.

4. The shelf. Fiction and reference stand on two shelves, with a plant, a candle and a globe between the books.

5. The book. It has a cover, a back with a barcode, the pages inside and a library card. The card gets a violet stamp on every day the book is opened.

6. Critics call and leave a review with stars, one a day per book.

7. A reader brings a book back. After a couple of quiet weeks, a book with empty margins comes back to the counter. Read it as someone else's and leave a pencil note in the margin.

8. A new edition. After a week on the shelf a book can get a «second edition, revised», with a preface and one more chapter.

9. The bargain box. Books that didn't work out go here at ten kopecks each, instead of being deleted.

10. A zine. Any book prints as a one-sheet A4 zine of eight pages, folded and cut once, with no glue. You can give someone a book that doesn't exist.

The window

The sky outside is the real one:

• the time of day, with dawn and dusk;
• the sun where it is now;
• the moon in tonight's phase, with stars;
• lit windows across the street in the evening.

Pick a town in the settings and the weather becomes real too: rain, snow, fog or a storm. It comes from Open-Meteo, with MET Norway as a fallback, and only the town's coordinates are sent. Without a town the shop has plausible weather of its own.

Privacy

Everything stays on the phone. The internet is used only for the weather and the town search.

Build

./gradlew assembleDebug                      # app.unwritten.dev
./gradlew assembleDebug -Pdemo               # app.unwritten.demo, two months of books
./gradlew testDebugUnitTest -Prender --tests '*RenderArtScreens*' && python tools/shots.py app/build/art

The catalogue of notes is app/src/main/assets/requests.tsv, checked by python tools/check_requests.py.

Fonts: Lora, Caveat, Forum, Inter, PT Sans Narrow, PT Mono (SIL OFL).

Part of StillCraft.