Archive for the ‘enhanced ebooks’ tag
The Power of Six Booktrack edition Review no comments
It is interesting, in our increasingly multimedia filled world — with 3D televisions at home and whatnot — to see how publishers are groping to bring the written word up to date and make books more palatable to readers raised on a constant diet of multimedia.
About a month ago Booktrack, a new imprint of HarperCollins, announced a new approach to enhancing ebooks — adding soundtracks to them with relevant sound effects and background music that fits the mood of the story. I was intrigued by the idea and downloaded The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore to check out the new format. I’ve finally had a chance to finish the book and can share my thoughts on it.
Update: Booktrack is actually not an imprint of HarperCollins, but an independent startup that has partnered with the publisher. Thanks @Booktrk!
First, as to the I Am Number Four series itself. This is a science fiction series aimed at younger readers. Some such works — the Harry Potter books and The Hunger Games come quickly to mind — can make for a fun read for older readers as well. Sadly, I Am Number Four is not one of these, at least for me. This is unfortunate as I think the premise of the story has potential and could have transcended its target audience if better executed.
I read the first book in the series, I Am Number Four, some time ago to see what it was about. I had then, until the Booktrack edition came along, dropped the series from my reading list. Once I had embarked on the reading of The Power of Six though, I thought I better catch up and first read I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Six’s Legacy. This is a short work that seems only to be available as an ebook and is available at the Kindle Store, B&N, Koboand elsewhere.
Six’s Legacy briefly sketches the story of Six’s life up to the events related in the latter part of the first book. While hardcore fans of the series will probably want to read Six’s Legacy, it is very short and, I think, overpriced at $3.99. In any case Six recounts the highlights of her adventures during the course of The Power of Six, so you won’t be missing much if you skip Six’s Legacy.
Other than the lack of an annotating capability, Booktrack’s app is quite full-featured. There are three different font styles to choose from and eight font sizes, the largest of which has capitals about three sixteenths of an inch tall, which is probably not large enough to accommodate those with vision problems. Three background colors are also available — white, sepia and black.
The app includes three sliders to independently adjust ambient sound, sound effects and background music volume. The app is supposed to automatically adjust to your reading speed and time the sounds to the events in the story based on that, but there is a manual adjustment as well. You can pause the soundtrack at any time by tapping the center of the screen. If you get distracted and the soundtrack becomes unsynced, you can double tap your last read word to re-sync it.
When I first started reading the Booktrack app I found the soundtrack very distracting. This was partly because of the novelty of it and partly because it took the app a while to adjust to my reading speed so that the sound events were timed properly. There is also a visual reading speed indicator (you can choose from four different types here as well) that I found really annoying until I realized that I could just turn it off.
After reading for a while and the novelty wore off, and as the soundtrack was timing perfectly with events in the story (I had to manually tweak the speed to get it there), I was able to forget about the sounds and just get immersed in the story. When this happened the Booktrack enhancement worked quite well for me and the sounds became part of the story.
The most obvious complaint about enhancing a book like this is that it takes the place of the reader imagining the scene in their mind as the story unfolds. Well, this might be true to a certain extent, but when I was able to get used to the soundtrack and loose myself in the story the sound effects faded into my mental picture and I think did enhance it. The fact that most of the sound effects are rather subtly done helps with this.
The background music fits the mood of the scenes you are reading and also worked well for me. At times I was reminded of the soundtrack of an RPG game. The music is mostly rather generic and this makes it less distracting and easier to become lost in the book. Many of us listen to music while we read and as Paul Cameron, CEO of Booktrack says, the music we are listening to is often disconnected to the story we are reading.
I’ve written before that I think one of the biggest problems facing fictional ebooks enhanced with video is the cost of making those videos in such a way that they actually enhance a work of fiction rather than distracting from it. Professional actors, appropriate sets and costumes are all required and do not come cheap. This leads developers to take shortcuts — like using abridgements (which I detest), for example — in order to deliver a product that is priced to sell. This is not an issue with Booktrack’s approach. The Booktrack edition of The Power of Six is only two or three dollars more than the unenhanced ebook.
Once I got used to it, Booktrack’s enhancement worked for me and I will probably try another one if there is a Booktrack edition of a book I want to read. I’m sure this is not going to work for everyone, but you should give it a try and see what you think. If you can get to the point where you can forget that the soundtrack is there while you are reading you might be pleasantly surprised.
If you aren’t interested in The Power of Six, Booktrack does have several editions of public domain titles that are available for free at iTunes. There are plans to release soundtracked editions of other contemporary authors and Android versions are said to be in the works as well.
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Booktrack – a different type of enhanced ebook no comments
Booktrack is another enhanced ebook publisher, but one with a bit of a twist. Rather than inserting video and other multimedia into an ebook, Booktrack adds soundtracks to them.
Synchronized music, sound effects and ambient sounds matched to your reading speed by the company’s proprietary technology — you get the idea. The first title to be released is The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore, which is the follow-up for I Am Number Four. This first title will contain more than 70 originally scored compositions. The Power of Six is available now at iTunes for $12.99.
"It’s difficult to imagine a movie with no soundtrack; yet, until today, the technology did not exist to synchronize music and sound within an ebook," said Paul Cameron, Booktrack’s co-founder and CEO. "Consider the reality of tens of millions of commuters around the world listening to a playlist that’s disconnected from what they’re reading —perhaps a sad song with an upbeat story. Instead, they can now instantly replicate a movie-like sound experience with Booktrack that fundamentally transforms their reading experience."
Over the next year Booktrack will be publishing a new short story each month. September’s offering will be In the South by Salman Rushdie, followed in October by Solace by Jay McInerney. Booktrack will also be releasing soundtracked versions of some of the classics — Sherlock Holmes is already available and is free. An Android version of BookTrack is in the works.
Booktrack has some high-profile backers, including Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal; the New Zealand Ministry of Science and Innovation and the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, which is the NZ government’s national economic development agency. Sony/ATV music and Park Road Post Production (owned by Peter Jackson’s production company; mixed the sound for LOTR The Return of the King, King Kong and District 9) do the sound production. Seems to be a strong NZ connection, though the company is headquartered in NYC.
I’ve downloaded The Power of Six on my iPad — I’ll let you know what I think when I get a chance to read it.
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Penguin releases enhanced version of Kerouac’s On The Road no comments
Penguin has released Jack Kerouac’s iconic On The Road in an enhanced version for the iPad.
Pulsating with the rhythms of jazz, frenetic sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, On the Road defined what it meant to be "beat" and captured the impulses of a liberated underground America. Based on Jack Kerouac’s adventures with Neal Cassady, On the Road tells the story of two friends crossing the country in search of a new kind of experience and authenticity that they could not find in mainstream culture. It has become a landmark in the history of American culture, inspiring everyone from John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates to Bob Dylan and David Bowie. Expressing a quintessential American vision of freedom and longing, On the Road is a timeless tale that resonates with each new generation.
Besides the complete text of the book, this Penguin Amplified version also includes:
- Interactive map of the trips made by the characters in the book, replete with historical photos.
- Family photos from the Kerouac estate.
- Audio clips of Kerouac reading from an early draft of On the Road.
- Reproductions of the first draft of the book on the famous 120-foot scroll.
- Side-by-side comparisons of the original scroll draft and the published text, highlighting the parts edited out on the recommendation of the publisher’s lawyers.
- Slideshow of the cover art from the international editions of On the Road.
On the Road will be priced at $16.99, but through July 5, 2011 it is being offered for the introductory price of $12.99. Available at the App Store.
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My adventures with enhanced ebooks no comments
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.
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Voyage of the Dawn Treader enhanced ebook 1 comment
HarperCollins will be releasing an enhanced ebook version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There is no release date yet, but the ebook should be out before the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader hits theaters on Dec 10.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will feature video, read-along audio excerpts, Narnia trivia game, illustrations, a map of Narnia, a blueprint of the Dawn Treader and a guide to the creatures and people of Narnia.
The enhanced Dawn Treader ebook will be available for a number of handheld multimedia readers and touchscreen devices and will be priced at $9.99.
Update: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is now available on the iPad via iBooks.
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Is This the Future of Enhanced Books? no comments
Researchers at Keio University are working on an ink-jet printer that can print aromas. The system uses the same technology as a standard inkjet printer, though to synthesize a wide variety of scents you would 
need thousands of scent components — unlike printing color pictures where you just need inks in the primary colors that can be mixed as needed.
Could we someday see pbooks enhanced with smell? And if that works will the technology migrate to ebooks? That is a scary thought — could Kindle 14 come with a scent emitter that would release smells associated with whatever you are reading? Perhaps the smell of decaying paper for those who miss paper books?
Trying to recreate the olfactory aspects of a recreated scene is nothing new. AromaRama and Smell-O-Vision both famously tried and failed to make movies into smellies. Even the idea of printing out scents using an inkjet is not new. A few years ago HP apparently filed for a patent on a camera that had a miniature gas chromatography probe to capture scents that could then be printed out using a special inkjet printer.
Source — NewScientist
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New Enhanced eBook/App Venture no comments
Love them or hate them; it looks like enhanced ebooks are here to stay. A new joint venture was announced today between enkHouse, a transmedia production company, and KiwiTech, a leading software developer for movie-tie-in enhanced ebooks.
Together the two companies will focus on creating enhanced ebook tie-ins to films and television programming. This would be reminiscent of the Pillars of the Earth transmedia iPad app that was a tie-in to the Starz miniseries based on the Ken Follet book.
A couple of paragraphs from the press release concerning the principals:
Rakesh Gupta, CEO and Founder of KiwiTech, also founded and led Aptara Corporation, the largest eBook publishing services company in the world. “This alignment gives us tremendous opportunities to enter new markets, especially the film-to-enhanced-eBook market,” says Gupta. “Our companies are a good team, sharing entrepreneurial spirits and decades of innovative work across the media spectrum.”
EnkHouse is led by David Marlett, a film industry consultant, screenwriter and producer, who is himself an author. (His first novel will be published by Brown in the fall.) He comes to enkHouse as Transmedia Producer, a new designation of the Producers Guild of America. “The three keys to a successful enhanced eBook are content, content, content,” says Marlett. Having been represented by William Morris Endeavor, he has over twenty years of experience writing and consulting on screenplays and productions for studios and producers such as DreamWorks, Arnold Kopelson and Michael Ovitz.
Obviously enhanced ebooks and apps must be popular enough to keep inspiring a stream of new releases and high powered partnerships such as this new venture. My own transmedia experiences have been mixed. It definitely can work very well for nonfiction and children’s books, but for adult fiction to be made into a successful enhanced ebook is much more challenging and requires a lot of finesse. I have not had a chance to look at the Pillars of the Earth app yet, but it does look interesting.
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Amazon Announces Kindle Editions with Audio/Video for iDevice Apps no comments
Amazon has announced that the Kindle app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch now has the ability to play embedded audio and video in books. Amazon is calling these new enhanced books Kindle Editions with Audio/Video and they have their own page.
So far there appear to be 13 titles
£149.00
£109
