Interactive ebooks take on fiction novels
Creating truly interactive ebook apps has been a task that’s been aimed more at children’s content like Alice in Wonderland or non-fiction work like Al Gore’s Our Choice. But a new transmedia publishing company is trying to breathe life into fiction novels, showcasing the written word and storytelling while enhancing it with an array of interactive elements.
Chafie Creative Group, based in Dallas, is introducing a new iPad app called Immersedition, the first in what it believes is a new form of interactive book-reading apps. The app will feature as its first book a story called The Survivors, a young adult piece of fiction from new author Amanda Havard, who designed the story to ultimately be an enhanced media experience. The 283-page book, which went on sale earlier this year in print and tells the stories of descendants from participants in the Salem Witch Trial, includes 300 touch points that reveal 500 interactive frames of content embedded in the pages of the book through watermarks.
The watermarks reveal things like historical facts, maps, photos, videos and character profiles that change depending on where in the story a user is. There’s also embedded music including three original tracks that can be turned on at key points. And there’s even live Twitter profiles from five of the main characters, who continue to tweet and add background to the story. All of the content works offline except the maps and Twitter feed.
The book works to preserve the reading experience for people, enabling them to still engage their imagination. So it doesn’t include images of the actual characters and instead shows runway shots of what they might wear. But it does include more than 50 location shots to give a broad sense of what a place looks like without getting into the details. The idea is to augment the reading experience and keep people involved while still respecting the traditional reading process.
A lot of the existing enhanced ebooks are children’s books that bring almost game-like elements into a story. Others like Our Choice employ infographics, videos, images and other elements that allow people to get deeper into the book as if it were a museum display that can be pinched, zoomed and manipulated. But it’s trickier to apply some of these elements to a novel, which can suffer if certain elements are too literally enhanced. Go too far and people feel like you’re robbing them of the experience of creating images in their head. Don’t go far enough and people will wonder what the point is of making the book interactive.
But I think just like we’re seeing with other books, we’ll see more publishers look to make fiction novels more interactive. I think it does have to be applied intelligently. And some books with some historical connections or a lot of locations might lend themselves better to this approach. But the right facts, background and extra details here and there can make the experience work well and deepen the engagement of readers. I don’t expect we’ll see all the classics get the ebook treatment overnight, but Immerseditions shows that it can work for new novels.
An example of a character's fashion
Historical notes
A character profile
A note from the author
A photo of a location
Table of contents
A character's Twitter feed
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Comments
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FeedbackWould rather have all the “immersion” stuff on a website. Everyone can pick up a book, not everyone can pick up an iPad.
Interesting Post.
There are a lot of factors to consider in the evolution of digital fiction. In my experience the shift is fundamentally about authoring a compelling user experience and finding the right balance between reading, exploration and interaction.
The other aspect impacting digital publishing is what is the rhythm of the experience. An analogue book doesn’t have an interface, isn’t connected to a network and it won’t let you know that you have mail. A paper book doesn’t offer a lot of avenues for distraction.
I think as digital literature establishes itself across devices and platforms, smaller packets of story will be more successful, simply because they are easier to consumer via mobile compute.
I think there is very interesting opportunities in the area of the digital Novella. Small, cost effective, stories that can be effectively produced at a reasonable price point.
IMO, it will be the adjunct/supplemental mobile interactive content that complements a piece of fiction to bring a new dimension to the User Experience.
Trying to make the whole enchilada of an experience interactive is, well, sort of exhausting (from the end user’s POV).
But, when I think about reading a book (including print or ebook), then have an option to have an interactive text chat with one of the characters to explore alternate and deeper story lines, well, that’s exciting.
Those are the kind of engagements I know companies are also working on right now. Much of it starts with children’s content, simply because kids are the best early-adopters, but, there’s no reason that young adult fiction should not move to incorporate interactive sub-stories and experiences.
I think that it is a little disturbing what is going on here. Yes this content should certainly be available on a website.But to embed videos into the text of a novel or other book is inherently to make it something other than a book. Pretty soo one will not even have to write a setting description for their story, they can just link to some youtube video. You can avoid a description of just about anything except for smell by linking to a given site. What is the point of a book if we are simply to enhance it with more flashy audio video content that overpowers the poetry in the prose.
Agreed, Alex. It’s not a book anymore once all these distractions get in the way. Plus, you’d have to be connected to the internet all the time. Not contained enough. I think there will be a serious divide between those who are up for exploring more as they read vs. those who just want to read… in peace. And that’s after getting to the people who are ok with reading on tablets. There are still masses who refuse to read entire books digitally.
Beth and Alex, I’d have to say in this example of the Immersedition most of your qualms have been answered. The article mentions that the majority of the content can be accessed without internet – only Google maps and Twitter.
Also, I think this app was created to actually preserve as much of the “book” aspect as possible. The book in this app stands alone as a great YA fiction series. I read the book before the app came out and very much enjoyed it. The extra content in this case is truly a supplement that will only bring readers closer to the real world aspects of the storyline. For instance, the locations in the book are all real… so if I was curious as to what the small town in Montana really looked like, I could just touch a button and see photos instead of putting down my book and heading over to Google.
To me, the purpose of this app and the content within it is to only enhance what you read and never to replace. In that regard, this book app is far better than the vast majority that come across as games or look like the special features on a DVD. This is still a book and only becomes enhanced when you want it to, where you want it to.
I loved it! Hope you guys will give it a chance!
Do 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.
The 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.
http://trapdoortechnologies.com/