My adventures with enhanced ebooks 1 comment
Last year enhanced books were the hot topic in the media and at book fairs as publishers churned out press releases touting their new multimedia book initiatives. This year it almost seems as if enhanced ebooks have been swept under the rug and forgotten.
To be sure, there are still multimedia ebooks being released, many in the form of individual book apps by smaller publishers specializing in the form. Vook is still alive and seems to be well, and Amazon has built up a large section of Kindle books with Audio/Visual
While it is obvious how multimedia can work well when used to enhance genres such as nonfiction and children’s ebooks, I’ve always found the idea that multimedia enhanced novels were going to take off and become the next big thing was rather dubious for a couple of reasons.
First of all, as a fan of immersive reading, it was hard for me to see how multimedia could enhance fiction rather than detracting from the reading experience. Secondly, I just couldn’t imagine the market for multimedia books becoming big enough to be financially viable for publishers. To me the market for enhanced ebooks felt like an artificial market publishers were trying to create when the demand was not there. True, in the future the demand could materialize to sustain a multimedia book industry, as more and more consumers have tablets (the best devices for reading this type of ebook on), but I suspect that in the foreseeable future there will not be enough of a market to sustain more than a few smaller specialized developers.
I guess the good news is that, after sampling a few multimedia enhanced ebooks over the past six to eight months (several of which I will mention here), I have come to the conclusion that, believe it or not, multimedia can be used effectively in fiction.
Many of the first multimedia books simply scattered segments of video interviews with the author throughout the book. Thankfully, we seem to have moved beyond that form of primitive “enhancement.” Grabbing the reader by the ear and dragging her on a backstage tour in the middle of her reading does not for an immersive read make. Interviews and biographical materials are valuable resources for many readers; but they need to be placed in their own section of the book and listed in the table of contents so they can be accessed as desired.
For me, multimedia integrated into the telling of a fictional story works best when it serves as an illustration of the action, similar to the way in which a still photo or drawing can serve to illustrate places, characters and things in a traditional book. To do this effectively and without becoming a distraction to the reader requires a delicate touch. It also requires professional direction and production, as well as professional actors in appropriate costume performing on sometimes elaborate sets.
All of this is expensive. There are ways to keep costs down, but from what I’ve seen so far I think these shortcuts tend to result in products with either limited appeal or quality problems.
One obvious way to cut the costs of production when developing an enhanced ebook is to use a title from the public domain. There are quite a few of these available on the iPad, and some have been quite popular — Alice for the iPad by Atomic Antelope for example — but this is probably a limited market when compared to more contemporary fiction.
War of the Worlds ($3.99 at iTunes) is one of the enhanced titles I’ve recently read. 
Developer Smashing Ideas has taken the text from the H.G. Wells classic and added sound effects and a number of illustrations, most of them with some form of interactive animation. I found the enhancements to be entertaining and fun without detracting from my reading. This type of enhanced ebook might help to make the classics more palatable to young readers.
A good example of the type of interactive illustrations in this production of WOTW is when the hero is in his dark upstairs study. He wants to look outside to see what is happening, but it is raining and the window is covered in condensation. But you can help by using your finger to wipe off the condensation and reveal what is waiting outside. This animation is relatively subtle and helps to draw the reader into the story.
Vook is probably the most prolific publisher of multimedia books. I’ve had mixed results with their titles in the past. One Vook that I did really like was Reckless Road: Guns N’ Roses. I’ve recently read another Vook title, From Cape Town with Love. This Vook illustrates another way in which multimedia books can be made and sold less expensively, but it is not a way that works for me.
From Cape Town with Love ($6.99 at iTunes; $5.59 Kindle A/V) is based on the Tennyson Hardwick novel by Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. Blair Underwood stars in the video segments and directs the production.
The video portions of Cape Town generally worked for me. They are brief and serve to illustrate the action quite well. This tale is mostly set in Los Angeles, and the video mostly seems to be shot in locations around the Hollywood Hills. This was probably not that expensive to do because elaborate sets and props, etc. are not called for. Underwood is good in the role of Tennyson Hardwick, but some of the other actors were less satisfying.
As I say, the multimedia used in Cape Town works, but what doesn’t work for me is the fact that this is an abridgement. The paper book this is based on has over 300 pages and it is pretty obvious that a lot of them have been hacked out for this Vook. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never been able to comprehend why a successful author would allow their work to be abridged or why any reader would want to read a butchered version of a book.
If From Cape Town with Love were unabridged I would have enjoyed it much more, but it probably would have then cost more. As it is, this Vook left me unsatisfied and not feeling like I want to rush out and buy the other books in the series. This was not the fault of the multimedia, but rather of the abridgement.
Penguin dipped its toes in the enhanced ebook waters with its release of The Pillars of the Earth iPad app ($12.99 at iTunes). 
This production includes the unabridged text of Ken Follett’s classic historical fiction about the building of a cathedral in medieval times. I originally read this book a number of years ago, but wanted to see what Penguin had done with it.
Besides video scattered throughout the ebook, Pillars offers a number of other features. There is an interactive character tree and a number of behind-the-scenes type videos that are accessible through the table of contents. There are also a few architectural drawings that will be welcome to non-architecturally inclined readers such as myself.
This production of Pillars of the Earth is a tie-in with the Starz miniseries, from which the video clips are taken. This means the video features professional actors wearing period costumes and performing on elaborate sets. Overall this is a nice production and if you are thinking of reading the book I have no reservations about recommending the multimedia version.
I do have a couple of quibbles about the multimedia sections though. For one thing, every video clip has a blurb at the end for the DVDs from Sony Pictures. This gets obnoxious after awhile — I guess it would have been too much to ask for Sony to just put the ads on a few of the longer videos.
Then there is the divergence between what Follett writes in the book and how it is portrayed in the miniseries. As you know, when a book is translated to film, dialogue and other things are changed to fit the director’s vision. It is rather jarring when the scene portrayed in one of the video clips conveys the same scene you have just read with different dialogue, props and settings. This probably could have been avoided by the more careful choosing of segments of video that more faithfully matched Follett’s original work. On the whole the video works well in Pillars to illustrate the story — but with a little more care it could have been that much more seamless.
Being a fan of immersive reading, I began reading these and other enhanced ebooks skeptical that I would be much impressed. In fact, after reading a few titles, I can see that it is possible to insert multimedia into a novel and have it work. But is it practical?
To turn a book that is not in the public domain into a successful multimedia production must be quite expensive. There is no way Pillars of the Earth could have been done with video made expressly for the enhanced book. Using methods like abridging the text to keep the costs down don’t work because they result in an inferior product. Using interactive animation as in War of the Worlds works for some types of subject matter, but will not be appropriate for all books.
I really just don’t see there being enough readers who would be willing to pay enough to make it financially viable for publishers to produce the sort of multimedia that will in fact “enhance” ebooks rather than detract from them, at least when it comes to unabridged contemporary fiction from authors that are still alive.
I don’t expect multimedia books to just die, but I suspect that most enhanced fictional ebooks (other than public domain titles) will fall into one of two categories in the future:
- eBooks enhanced with audio visual biographical content and interviews with the author and other behind-the-scenes content.
- Experimental work and productions where the author feels the need to use multimedia in addition to the printed word to accomplish his/her vision.
I will probably continue to sample the occasional enhanced ebook, if I come across something I really like I’ll write about it. Probably next on my list is Dark Prophecy by Anthony E. Zuiker — creator and executive producer of the CSI series. This is an interactive iPad thriller (available at iTunes) that has been out a couple of months and has mostly good reviews.
While writing this, it occurs to me that the enhanced ebook boom had something in common with the interactive movie fad that hit the computer gaming industry in the mid 90’s. FMV-based games (Full Motion Video) did not work out too well either — although for partially different reasons. Remember Phantasmagoria? Well, it’s probably just as well if you don’t.
Possibly Related Posts:
One Response to 'My adventures with enhanced ebooks'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'My adventures with enhanced ebooks'.
Look forward to hearing how you get on, your last post was great, really interesting.