The next step in e-book evolution (final part)

There’s no denying that e-books and e-readers are shaking up the publishing world. But some books might never be popular in a digital format. When technology doesn’t work for a book is something that publishers will have to weigh carefully.

“Does Anna Karenina work better as an app?” asks Jason Rekulak, an editor at Quirk Books. “Do you really want to sit and scroll through 900 screens?”

Another Leo Tolstoy classic, War and Peace, clocks in at 1,000-plus pages. These long novels might be difficult for people to handle on a screen, although it is entirely subjective. In Rekulak’s case, “long-form narrative reading is still superior in the form of a book.”

Another sect of books probably safe is children’s books. Rekulak has seen children’s books on the iPad that are less like books and more like computer games. “I’m not going to sit down with my child and an $800 screen and let him play himself to sleep,” he says. This reluctance is something he believes many parents feel, but not all. This video shows a two-year-old grabbing the iPad and going to town. She immediately starts playing and her father encourages her to use the apps. In fact, you can tell that he purposely bought apps that she could use. This is one instance where a parent believes a child should be comfortable around technology at a young age, regardless of how expensive it is.

“There would have to be a huge cultural shift,” Rekulak says. Today, it is more common for parents “to steer their kids” to books and away from video games. In the future, that sentiment might change. “Maybe you’ll sit kids down with their own baby screens. That’s a scary vision of the future for me.”

The next step in e-book evolution (part 3)

There really is an app for everything, including your reading material. Publishers are experimenting with accompanying book apps, which can be anything from games to excerpts, because they like to think they’ll draw more attention and possibly bring in more revenue.

“Apps don’t get a very high price, maybe $0.99, so it’s hard to sell enough to make any money,” says Michael Shatzkin, CEO and founder of Idea Logic. “I think they’re more of a marketing device than a product. They alert people and make them aware of the book, but they’re rarely a separate product.”

Quirk Book’s small staff means it has no programmers and any apps based on books come from outside sources. “We don’t have any definite strategy because it’s all so new,” says Jason Rekulak, editor of Quirk Books. “Usually if someone wants to license it then we do.” The Pride and Prejudice and Zombie game was created by an outside company, but it helps keep the book fresh in people’s minds, not that the surprise hit really needed too much help in that area.

In Rekulak’s opinion, certain texts, “where the content is reliant on being up to the minute,” have to begin reshaping themselves. Books like restaurant guides fall into that category. “So they won’t be selling their books, they’ll be selling the content,” he says. “They need to be able to market their product across different platforms.” Apps might be the best way for guides to sell their content instead of an entire book.

This app has the same content as the book but is enhanced with location-based features.

A how-to book can be broken down into short, condensed screens for an app and sold at a cheaper price or given away free. Job seekers once bought a text coaching interview techniques. An app could be a series of questions and answers that one might encounter during an interview or tips and lists of dos and don’ts. Apps may be great advertising, but they run the risk of replacing the book. A $0.99 app with most of the information in the book might be more appealing to customers. From former HarperCollins publisher Marion Maneker’s perspective, that’s not completely bad.

“What’s the worst thing that will happen if the app replaces the book?” he asks. “From the author’s perspective their ideas are successfully getting out there and they’re making money off of them.”

He agrees with Rekulak’s point that publishers can’t be stuck in the belief that the content can only be sold as a book. By only considering printed products and how to transfer them to digital versions, publishers “run the risk of being bypassed.”

But there remains some types of books that could be safe as hard-copies.

Another vision of e-books will be discussed in “the next step in e-book evolution (part 4).”

The next step in e-book evolution (part 1)

E-book sales posted a triple-digit percentage growth last year so publishers know they’re more than a fad or a niche. Now, they just have to figure out a way to make people start paying more by giving them reasons to want to pay more. In other words, the e-book has to become something more than it already is.

The way it stands now, publishers rip the text from a book and slap it onto a digital screen. Voila! Now pay. What they’re finding out is that readers don’t want to pay the same amount for an e-book as a hard-copy book. The reason being is that people believe it doesn’t cost as much to put together an e-book. There’s no actual publishing involved.

What they’ve come to realize is that the shape (digitally speaking) of books needs to change.

Right now the e-book is a boring reproduction of a hard-copy book.

Companies like Vook, Open Road and Enhanced Editions are betting on publishing consultant Michael Shatzkin’s prediction of multimedia books. According to the CEO and founder of Idea Logic, books will be more than just a story printed on the digital pages of a device, they’ll also include audio and video.

Right now, hard copy books still constitute the lion’s share of total book revenue. According to the Association of American Publishers, e-books make up less than 4 percent of the book business. Many in the industry aren’t thinking about them quite as seriously as they should, says Shatzkin. In two or three years, publishers should be thinking about e-books first and finding a better format.

One thing publishers can do is go all out with the technology offered to them. Tablets mean that you don’t just have an e-reader in your hands, you have all sorts of access to different software.

As Elizabeth Bennett enters Netherfield Hall for the ball at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, the music of a waltz can drift over the reader. J.R.R Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings is so complete that interactive maps and timelines can untangle the history and interconnected genealogies of the characters – the reader can then easily see that Aragorn was a direct descendant from his wife Arwen’s uncle.

Many current companies that enhance books like to place author interviews at the front or end of a chapter, but what if the page of an e-book was more evolved than that. Chapters could be akin to insulated Web pages. A small bar on the far left or right could show when accompanying media is available. Readers have the choice to either ignore it and come back or interrupt the story to see what depths are uncovered.

However, there are few multimedia books currently available and so no one knows how much of a success or a failure they would be. There is no guaranteed market for a book that is accompanied by video and audio. Former HarperCollins publisher Marion Maneker believes enhanced editions would be so expensive that it wouldn’t be cost effective to produce them. But he’s not sure.

“It’s what you try and what works and what you try after that,” Maneker says. “[Publishers] try to make the best of the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. The smart people know it’s guesswork: it’s an art, not a science,” he says. “People will know more when people start doing more.”

His own version of future e-books is more of a glimpse to the past.

Another vision of e-books will be discussed in “the next step in e-book evolution (part 2).”

Is Apple conducive to stealing?

Sick of the iPad? If you don’t have one, then most likely you are. Still, there’s constant news either because the device is changing some company, lacking something noticable now that it’s been out a week or, in this case, causing all sorts of problems for other industries.

The book publishing industry knows that it’s in trouble and has to make some serious changes because of e-books, but one of its fears is coming true because of the iPad: piracy!

TorrentFreak tracked downloads of books on BitTorrent throughout the week after the iPad launched and found that, yes, there is some illegal downloading going on. “The number of unauthorized eBook downloads on BitTorrent grew by 78% on average.” That is a huge number. The interesting part is that the books that TorrentFreak tracked were business books because that fit the “demographics of iPad buyers.” Looking at the general bestselling list on Amazon provided nothing. Those 10 books were not seen on BitTorrent, although they might be elsewhere (i.e. Pirate Bay).

One thing that the book publishing industry can relax about is that book piracy isn’t anywhere near illegal music downloading. Of course, the iPod has been out for almost a decade, whereas the iPad and other e-readers have only been popular a couple of years. So, while the number is small right now, it will most likely grow in the coming years.

True, it’s not Apple’s fault, per se. Apple is just at the front of a lot of technological advances right now and it’s the technology, not the company, that is making it possible for people to skirt around paying. No matter what company created the iPod or the iPad, people will find a way to get things for free. Because who likes to pay for stuff?

Brave New Books

All these e-readers and tablet computers are great for avid readers, aren’t they? Not only are you able to download a lot of e-books for low prices, but now these e-books have all sorts of added features. There are extra apps to accompany them, there are extra notes and there are ways of buying books per chapter.

Imagine if the Lord of the Rings trilogy was originally published in the age of the e-reader. There would be all sorts of added bells and whistles. The e-books would be like buying the extended DVDs. There would be interactive maps following the journey to Mordor. There would be documents, like the ones Gandalf finds in Gondor detailing the Ring. There would probably be character sketches and photos of what gave J.R.R. Tolkien his inspiration.

These are some of the things that David Baldacci’s new book Deliver Us From Evil is going to come equipped with. The book experience is not just about reading a book any more. It’s become a more in-depth experience and journey. The nerd in me loves this.

The iPad's not out yet, but enriched e-books will be right at home on its screen.

The other side of the fence doesn’t like the way our grass looks though. For the people who make contracts and try to figure out rights, things are getting a little sketchy. Imagine trying to make a movie like Deliver Us From Evil into a movie. Who gets rights to certain aspects? Undoubtedly the publisher’s will say anything part of the original book package is the book. The studio will say that those extra bells and whistles are media rights that the movie company should have rights to.

Are research photo or text cut from the final product really a part of a book? Do these things belong with the studio that makes the movie? After all, the studio might choose to include some of the cut text. Oftentimes a movie based on a book will have extra scenes that help move the plot or are visually more appealing or whatever the reason is.