Reduce the amount of space taken by media player in split view

I am using the Split View functionality of my Android tablet to read e-books while also listening to their audio-book versions. For this purpose, I need to have most of my screen given to the e-pub reader and only a narrow bar assigned to the media player. I have already tried the VLC media player and some other ones but they take up about one-fourth of the valuable space. Any ideas on how I might reduce the amount of space taken by the audio player? Or are there any players you know with the desired functionality in Split View mode?