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| Breakdown of Enhanced eBook development among publishers [Credit: Aptara Corp., "3rd Annual eBook Survey of Publishers," September 2011] |
Ebooks have come a long way in a few short years, but one of the areas where they haven't even begun to reach their full potential is with regards to enhanced content. Aside from the sheer newness of the medium for many publishers, one of the main reasons for this is because thus far the major focus has been in converting print books to digital, in essence creating digital equivalents of printed books. Consequently, the major effort has been to develop digital editions that resemble print, that replicate printed books in electronic form, right down to the fake book edges and page turns found in iBooks.
While this is perfectly fine, particularly in converting previously published works, and has greatly helped to ease what has often been a difficult transition for many readers, it has at the same time limited the creative vision of what an electronic book can do going forward. Only now are content creators beginning to throw off the shackles and blinders that have restricted their imagination. Beyond just adding in some bonus video and audio content, electronic formats are capable of transcending the parameters of what a book has been until now. In the future, books will encompass a much broader spectrum of media, including such possibilities as networked interactive input from globally located readers, or books without boundaries, literally, in which the pages might turn in any direction, rather than just left to right, depending on where the reader wants the story to go. Adding factors such as geolocation and algorithmic adaptation can produce books that are different for each reader (or group of readers) each time they are read. The possibilities are virtually endless.
But first you must start somewhere. And for now, that's mainly been restricted to adding in some audio content and a couple of videos in between the standard lines of text. Cookbooks, travel guides, and other non-fiction works are the main place this is happening, aside from read-to-me features of children's books and a handful of pretty cool digital adaptations of classics such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, and a couple of rather curious Alice in Wonderland innovations. Most of these have been done as apps because ebook formats themselves haven't had the capability to produce them ... until now. With ePub 3 (and presumably KF8 to an as-yet unknown degree), the underlying HTML5/CSS3 coding incorporates the needed features of multi-layer, graphic intensive projects that enhanced ebooks inevitably entail, giving ebooks at last the possibilities of scripted content that websites have long had.
But one thing at a time. The chart above is taken from the recent Aptara survey discussed a few posts ago, and shows the rate of enhanced ebook development among the various publishing sectors. The key factor is the percentage of publishers who are now producing them, to which I have added (in red) last year's figures for reference. As you can see, the highest rate of production is in the education field, with K-12 publishers shifting in a single year from 4% to a 35% rate of adoption. This is likely due to the read-to-me feature and simple graphic interactivity being naturally suited to children's picture books such as those by Dr. Seuss, although more complex textbooks and scientific manuals have increased in production by quite a large margin as well. The Trade sector, which a year ago led the pack at 10%, has in the meantime fallen behind in its adoption rate, merely doubling its pace to 21%.
Overall, a whopping 42% of publishers say they're still investigating enhanced ebooks, with another 18% having no plans at all to begin producing them. Certainly, a large number of publishers never will, as the content they produce is not conducive to much more than basic black on white (although such enhancements as video interviews or embedded audio tracks for the visually impaired could be useful anywhere - and technically even hyperlinks and built in dictionaries are enhanced features not found in print editions, but who's counting?). A majority of the market will likely remain books built out of words and nothing more, at least for a time. But for those of us looking to develop extra features for our stories and bridge the gap between a broad array of multimedia experiences, these numbers are indicative of the state we're in: a tentative beginning in which only the first few steps have yet been taken.
Improved e-books will modify the paradigm of what this implies to be a Book i.e. we’ll switch away from the print-to-digital transformation.
ReplyDeleteSurvey forms
Some will, certainly. What will more likely occur is a split in which a more conservative faction retains the print book structure in digital form, while a more creatively progressive contingent expands the medium out into the broadest realms of possibility, redefining what an "ebook" is. A true paradigm shift indeed. Where the actual market will settle is anybody's guess.
ReplyDeleteDo a search on Google for enhanced ebooks and you will find that there’s a divergence of opinion on them. The main critique falls into three areas.
ReplyDeleteThe first opinion states that enhanced ebooks with embedded video, sound and graphics, takes away from the enjoyment of the book because the enhanced ebook intrudes on the reader’s ability to imagine the story in his mind. The very popular Harry Potter books loved by children are used as a prime example.
This opinion states that any attempt to add greater dimensions to the Harry Potter story telling like the movies takes away from the imagination of the children. But that’s a false argument.
Sure, when a child reads a Harry Potter book, he or she congers up a vivid picture in their mind of the characters and environment in the book. Those critics hold that the movies made from those books somehow take away from that imagination process.
But if that were true, how do you account form the hundreds of millions of dollars each book in the series has generated as a movie? And most of the audience for these movies are the children that read the Harry Potter book. The children enjoyed both versions of the story telling and it did little to take way their imagination of the story.
Of course, the professional handling of the book material by the movie studio did the story justice. As in anything creative – it has bee done well.
The second critique of enhanced ebooks comes from those that say the imbedded multimedia and extended material interrupts the reading experience. They claim, rightfully so, that the embedded video, audio and links to the Internet within the text interrupts the reading of the book. But Trapdoor Books has recognized this problem and placed its multimedia and outside links in what is called the ‘marginalia’ that sits along the outside column of the text. This marginalia can be totally turned off and the reader can read just text.
The third critique has nothing to do with the reading experience. It has to do with economics — the cost of producing enhanced ebooks. This is a valid critique. It does cost more to produce an enhanced book. Thus the retail cost of the ebook is higher than the traditional ebook.
But Trapdoor Books has found a solution to that. Their enhanced books are FREE. They are advertising supported and that revenue pays for the production of the ebook.
So, Trapdoor Books has found the way to meet the objections of the enhanced book skeptics.
For future reference, I do not generally accept comments which are cut and paste blog posts from another site. These are seen by Google as duplicate content and lower search ranking value for the respective pages (yours as well as mine), and can result it blacklisting. Next time please write something unique to this blog or I will simply delete it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in response to your "comments" I will add a few of my own. Firstly, if you do a Google search for "enhanced ebooks" at least a few of the top results will be from this blog, which you would know if you had actually done that search, or been reading this blog for any time at all.
Secondly, a single reply serves to cover all three of your areas of complaint, which is simply that, as with all things, it all depends on the quality of the production.
But to take them one at a time...
1. This is an age-old argument which fails to take into account the fact that children have by far more vivid imaginations than adults, and yet virtually all children and young adult books have pictures ("Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and "How to Train Your Dragon" come readily to mind). If adding additional images (or video or whatnot) to a book destroys the reader's ability to imagine the story, then children would lose their imagination at the age of two. By this argument no pictures should ever be put in books and they should remain always and forever text and text only. This is an argument made by adults who have no imagination.
2. The complaint about enhanced content interrupting the reading experience is purely one of implementation. Thus far the transition to ebooks has been focused almost entirely on recreating the print book experience in a digital format, so inserting vaguely related material into the middle of things is bound to upset the flow. But ebooks are not print books. They can certainly produce very accurate reproductions, but they can also be much more, something unique and completely new. Digital by its very nature is interactive and multimedia, incorporating within the medium itself the ability to link, script, recombine, reflow, alter, manipulate, and re-conceive what a book can be. To even call it book is almost a misnomer. Ebooks will become vastly more than books have ever been in the past as content creators discover new and better ways to use the medium. It will just take adventurous minds to pioneer this new frontier. Anyone who thinks that ebooks will just remain words of backlit screens is seriously underestimating the creative spirit.
3. Economics is a part of every product every produced on the face of this planet. Hardbacks cost more than paperbacks, and yet they are still produced because consumers still buy them. Why, then, should enhanced ebooks be any different? If they cost more to produce, are well made, and provide a valuable and enjoyable experience, then a higher price is justly merited. Giving them away for free is idiocy and only serves to undermine the value of the work. And by the way, if you think audio-visual content interferes with the reading experience, that's nothing compared to inserting advertising in books. I absolutely refuse to support the ad-supported content model. That's like saying the book itself isn't worth anything, but the advertising is.
Lastly, in conjunction with my earlier admonition, I do not as a rule allow comments which are thinly disguised advertisements. A single mention of a relevant business is fine, and appreciated as a useful resource. Three rapid succession promotions is flagrant and blatant spam, and will be treated as such in future.