When is a book not a book? When it goes beyond words, photos and drawings. The latest generation of e-books are so new and different that publishers can’t agree on what to call them. Earlier this year Hachette Book Group called its version, an “enriched” book. The Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And soon Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland.”
All of these new books offer more than their black-and-white, ink-and-paper cousins. These new multimedia books use video integrated with text. Many would argue that the best device for these multimedia books is the iPad.
But as I write this I am reading stories about a group of people in CA who have discovered that the iPad is prone to overheating. They have filed a lawsuit against Apple saying that Apple has misled customers with its advertising and lashes out at Apple’s claim that iPad using simulates reading a book. But that is another story.
Multimedia Books
The idea of multimedia books is not new. A start-up company called Vook pioneered the concept as a mobile application and for the Web in 2009. But the tremendous success of the iPad is making publishers look much more seriously. “It’s a wide-open world,” said Molly Barton, the director of business development for Penguin. “You can show readers the world around the books that they’re reading.”
Simon & Schuster has taken the best-selling “Nixonland,” first published in hardcover in 2008 in a whopping 896 pages, and scattered 27 videos throughout the e-book. Most are news clips from events described in the book, including the Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960 and public reaction to the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each video clip, embedded in the page, starts to play with a simple tap of the iPad screen. After pausing to watch a video, the user can go back to reading the book.
Ellie Hirschhorn, the chief digital officer for Simon & Schuster, said the intent was to use the video sparingly, at points that seemed natural to the story, so that it wouldn’t overwhelm readers.” We set out to tell stories in a multimedia way, and to take advantage of the new technical features that allow great stories to be told,” Ms. Hirschhorn said. “It is still a reading experience.”
But is a book containing video really a reading experience? Maybe 30 videos scattered in 900 pages is a book. But what if there were 150 videos in 300 pages. What if a book contained an opening chapter, full-length movie and a closing chapter? And how will video change pricing. Right now a printed book may cost $12 and an e-book $8, but a video book may cost $15.
What do you think? Would you be willing to pay more for a book with video? Is a book filled with video a book, a TV, or a DVD player.
Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.
Discussion
By Adoniram on Aug 05, 2010
I am a (brand new!) iPad owner. An iPad is not a book, but more importantly, a book is not a novel; nor is a book a collection of short stories, or a brief history of the world. A "book" is a bound set of papers.
Conflating "book" with writing is a bit absurd. Is the editorial article dead because it isn't written on a broadsheet? No, of course not - it's the substrate and distribution method that's waning in use, not the content itself.
It seems that we are culturally confused about the difference between medium and content. The encoding of one into the other may have many important aspects and even change the meaning of the individual parts, but they are still unique, individual parts.
The book - an object made with pulp, glue, etc - is the perfection of printing and binding processes from thousands of years of global research and culture. Language, writing, art: these things all predated books and will long outlast them.
Your very thesis, "When is a book not a book? When it goes beyond words, photos and drawings" is inaccurate. These things do not equate a book. Words are not books. Photos are not books. Drawings are not books.
Books are special and valuable. Some of us will value them for the rest of our lives. Two years ago, I bought a book that cost more than my iPad. Why? Because it had special meaning to me, was beautifully printed, was extremely rare, etc.
What we are seeing is a commodity medium (books) transitioning back into a luxury medium, and the emergence of new commodity media. An iPad is also a luxury item, but it too should be conceptually separate from content. It leverages content beautifully, but an iPad is not photos, nor words, nor drawings. It's a collection of circuits and chemistry in an aluminum and glass frame.
Saying that new media devices like Nooks, Kindles, and iPads compete with books is a confusing the attributes of these devices with their usage, and confusing volume with value. Some of us will value books ad infinitum. Those who don't probably never did in the first place. The latter category of user is more interested in content than the object itself, and recognizing that is critically important.
By Howie Fenton on Aug 06, 2010
@Adoniram
Very interesting and well thought out post. I could write for hours my response to your response … but I thought it might be more interesting to hear from someone at Google who is tasked with defining and counting all the books in the world.
Google Books staffer Leonid Taycher offers this.
"Well, it all depends on what exactly you mean by a “book.” We’re not going to count what library scientists call “works,” those elusive "distinct intellectual or artistic creations.” It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between -- and scan -- books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries.
"One definition of a book we find helpful inside Google when handling book metadata is a “tome,” an idealized bound volume. A tome can have millions of copies (e.g. a particular edition of “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown) or can exist in just one or two copies (such as an obscure master’s thesis languishing in a university library). This is a convenient definition to work with, but it has drawbacks. For example, we count hardcover and paperback books produced from the same text twice, but treat several pamphlets bound together by a library as a single book.
"Our definition is very close to what ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers) are supposed to represent, so why can’t we just count those? First, ISBNs (and their SBN precursors) have been around only since the mid 1960s, and were not widely adopted until the early-to-mid seventies. They also remain a mostly western phenomenon. So most books printed earlier, and those not intended for commercial distribution or printed in other regions of the world, have never been assigned an ISBN.
"The other reason we can’t rely on ISBNs alone is that ever since they became an accepted standard, they have been used in non-standard ways. They have sometimes been assigned to multiple books: we’ve seen anywhere from two to 1,500 books assigned the same ISBN. They are also often assigned to things other than books. Even though they are intended to represent “books and book-like products,” unique ISBNs have been assigned to anything from CDs to bookmarks to t-shirts."
By Adoniram on Aug 09, 2010
Thanks for responding, Howie. Google has certainly undertaken an interesting challenge. It's fascinating to hear the staffer's thoughts on editions. As we know, some editions are altered for content or accuracy reasons. Others were altered due to printing constraints. It is entertaining to think about these changes completely abstracted from their original medium.
Like just about everyone that reads this blog, print pays my bills today. I think it's very important to understand what makes print valuable versus what makes content valuable. If our business makes its money off of content, then we should be pursuing a content strategy. If our business makes its money off of printing, then we should be pursuing a manufacturing strategy.
For most of us, it's probably a blend or the two. Figuring out the percentages is where success lies.
Discussion
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