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Are Apps The Future of Book Publishing?

(Photo credit: John Blyberg)

We're at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What's more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets. People are using those e-readers, too. On Amazon.com, books for its Kindle outsell its paper books.

What's more, the explosion of e-books is putting pressure on publishers between demands for price cuts on one hand, and competition from independent authors like Amanda Hocking, who earned over $2 million selling e-books on her own before signing with a major publisher.

It's no surprise, then, that publishers are turning to the app as a possible product for books moving forward.  This has led to another movement towards enhanced books, particularly as apps for iPhone, Android, and other tablets. Are tablet apps the book of the future? In order to find out, I talked to authors, publishers, and app programmers, and read more than a few book apps.

The Varieties of E-Book App Experiences

One of the things about the e-book market right now is that there are a variety of experiences. Perhaps the type of e-book app that will seem most familiar to people would be something along the lines of Penguin's Amplified Edition of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. This edition, which is purchased as an iPad app, features things like actual manuscript pages, the ability to share quotes on social media, and audio clips of Ayn Rand on various topics. These materials function similarly to the extras section on a DVD - they're not integrated in the story, but they're something that might be of great interest to people who are or become fans of the book.

Increasingly common, though, is bringing about a more interactive experience. For example, The Gift, which was published earlier this year by Persian Cat Press, is reminiscent of an illustrated children's book. However, it's not only narrated, but the reader has to interact with various parts of the book to move the story forward. In this case, the enhanced aspects of the book are an integral part of the story. (This one is a particular favorite of my toddler son.)

Perhaps the most wildly divergent book app I've encountered so far is Chopsticks, which is another Penguin book, but one that's vastly different than their amplified editions. It's described as a novel, but it's vastly different than a traditional novel. As you turn the pages, you aren't confronted with a traditional narrative, but rather interact with different pieces of the lives of Glory, a teen piano player, and the boy who moves in next door. The story's told through newspaper clippings, pictures, songs, and more.  It's a rather fascinating way to tell a story.

For those people who still just want to cozy up with words on a page, I think one of my personal favorite e-book enhancements is Booktrack. Booktrack is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It provides a soundtrack for the books you're reading. But it doesn't only provide music - it also provides sound effects as you're reading. You can try it yourself by checking out their free adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." It's pretty cool - nice period mood music. As Holmes sits by the fire, you hear the fire. When he and Watson are in a cab, you hear the clip-clop of the hooves.  Even particularly cool is that it's well-timed. There was a point where the story describes a woman screaming, and I heard the scream as I was reading the words. It made for a really immersive experience.

Another notable book app - and an approach I can see be adopted by others going forward, is The World of Richelle Mead, produced by Razorbill Books. The app itself isn't a book. Rather, it's a platform that fans of Richelle Mead, who's written the hit YA series Vampire Academy, can use to buy enhanced books. Within the app, says Razorbill President Ben Schrank, "fans can interact with the author and each other." In addition to enhanced content, the app doubles as a social media platform for Mead fans. "It's more of a community app than a book app," comments Schrank.

How To Create Enhanced E-Books And Apps

Creating book apps is an enormous challenge, and different publishers handle aspects differently. For most of the publishers I spoke to, the key aspect is immersion.

"We’re very careful that we use the interactive capabilities of tablet devices to enhance and support the narratives of our apps, rather than adding them merely because the capability to do so exists," said Jos Carlyle of Persian Cat Press, who is the creative director of the company and author of their app The Gift. "The interactive features aren’t enhancements to the story as such, but rather intrinsic and essential facets of the story itself. We feel it’s crucial that the interactivity we include in our apps moves the narrative along in a meaningful manner."

Getting to that point, though, wasn't easy. "An interactive script has to work on many levels, speak to multiple senses, and ultimately translate the creative vision to the technical solution without losing any of its integrity. In practice, this meant that we had to revise and even completely rewrite the script no less than 16 times throughout the production of The Gift."

Paul Cameron, who founded Booktrack, concurs with this. One of the key challenges he had in developing Booktracks was in syncing the ambient noises and music to different reading speeds. "I've been working on this for 4 years," he told me. "The more you read, more accurate it gets.  We got there by looking at eye-tracking and other techs. What we worked out is that people actually read quite consistently - even as they speed up and slow down."

In working with creating an enhanced e-book entitled Gift (a different book than Persian Cat's), Barbara Marcus of Open Road Integrated Media described a moment to me when she tried to put too much in. "I tried to put something in, but [author] Andi [Buchanan] pushed back. And she was right!  What makes a difference is that Andi saw the whole thing."

I got a contrarian opinion about immersion from Ian Karr of the IKA Collective, which has produced e-book apps, including an enhanced version of Frederick Kempe's 1961. "I’m of the belief that any kind of prompt that encourages more exploration and discovery isn’t bad.  People are constantly interrupted by the phone, by the doorbell, by kids screaming - but they keep coming back to their book. Giving a  richer experience is really the key."

"For example, if you're reading a book where Kennedy gives a speech, you might stop and look up the speech to see who wrote it or something like that," he continued. "Just as there can be stream of consciousness in writing, there can be a 'stream of literacy' in reading, where reading one thing lights the fire to start something new. The bottom line is just providing that richer experience."

A Challenge For Publishers

"The number one thing that publishers don't know is if there's a huge business here," Razorbill's Ben Schrank told me.  "It'll probably be more than a year before we can quantify it."

This is a sentiment that I've seen echoed by other publishers as well. "One of the inherent problems is that some apps are very very good, so the consumer’s getting a deal when they buy them," said Booktrack's Brooke Geahan. "But others aren't, so it's not the same value. There's no standard yet for the price of book apps." In fact, it's that aspect that drew her to work for Booktrack in the first place, because "the customer always knows what they're getting."

One strategy that Booktrack is pursuing to expand its business is to get the community involved. According to Paul Cameron, one of their goals for 2012 is to provide tools and infrastructure so that readers can make their own soundtracks for the books in Booktrack's library.

Barbara Marcus of Open Road Integrated Media says that the confusion about how to handle book apps and enhanced e-books is something to be expected right now, in part because so many publishers are doing different things. "This is a time of experimentation. I’d be really disappointed if we’re weren't seeing both successes and failures. I do think that everyone seems to be looking at these differently."

"From what I've read," she adds. "Nobody has got it yet."

A Word From The Authors

From the writer's perspective, there are as many opinions as there are types of e-book apps. Big name authors, such as Ray Bradbury and Jonathan Franzen have made their disdain for plain e-books clear, and presumably they wouldn't care too much for an e-book app, either. I spoke with a few other authors, though, to get their views.

One of the first people I talked to was my friend, indie author Jay Bell. Jay's first book was through a boutique publisher, but since then he's been successfully publishing independently.  His novel Something Like Summer has been a consistently good seller in Amazon's Kindle store, and it's been optioned for a movie. His primary marketing tool is social media, and his husband illustrates many of his books. Jay, I thought, was a shoe-in as a guy who might be interested in working on an e-book app. To my surprise, though, he wasn't.

"One of my thoughts regarding enhanced eBooks was 'Hey, finally I can make the reader see exactly what I want them to!' The same with songs, which often put me in a mood and inspire me to write. Now I can let my readers hear those same tunes while reading," he began.  "The more I think about it though, the more these 'enhancements' are probably too intrusive and will potentially get in the way of the story."

He continued. "[W]hat other medium requires us to use our imagination to paint our own pictures and hear our own sounds? I’m not against a better way of displaying a fantasy map or a recorded message from the author at the end of a book, but I hope that the actual stories will be left to shine on their own in the future."

Author Andrea J. Buchanan is probably most famous for The Daring Book For Girls, but she's now delved into the enhanced e-book world with her new work, Gift. That book, which was published earlier this week, is integrated with music, video, and more events. For Minecraft players, there's even a Minecraft map that can be downloaded separately. When I talked to her about her new book, she also voiced some of Bell's concerns.

"First and foremost, I’m a reader," she told me. "So I want an immersive experience. As a writer, I was really conscious of respecting that. I didn’t want to put stuff in there because I could -  I wanted to support and enhance the story."

In her view, too, there's a right and a wrong way to do a book. "When this type of thing first started – books enhanced with DVD bonus content – that just felt like going to a website. Nothing about it made me feel I was exploring the book further."

That said, she sees a lot of books as being ripe for enhancement. "Take those very convoluted fantasy books that have like 600 different characters who relate to each other differently. There's lots of opportunities for interaction, or even just simple things like adding a map."

She doesn't see book apps or enhanced e-books as being a challenge to traditional text, either. "The line is blurring between book and e-book, but the enhancements don't make it necessarily better than a book - just different."

For a third point of view, I spoke with science-fiction author John Scalzi. Scalzi hasn't written an enhanced book, but he's published a variety of books and serves as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Echoing the concerns of the publishers above, he said that one of the issues about enhanced books are the economics. "The issue is: do these new apps make people happy when they read their books? If they add value in the sense that they’re getting more, then I don’t think there’s a problem. If it gets in the way of enjoying the book, that’s no good. That will draw people away from the books. It's like the movies. If 3-D is done well, people get into seats. But if it’s like Clash of the Titans, you just sit there asking ‘why did I spend the extra 5 dollars?'"

He also echoed the concerns of Bell and Buchanan when it came to the artistic side. "Most people who are writers are used to writing stories, novels, or forms where everything is in the text. So if enhanced books become more widespread, that could be tricky. I could make you become more dependent on the platform to tell story rather than just writing it down. That raises lots of questions."

So would Scalzi ever pursue an enhanced e-book? "I think as long as there’s an opportunity to read book the way you want to read it, with enhancements to complement reading experience, I don’t see a problem. From an economic perspective, if they make it more valuable or useful to readers and they're willing to pay for it, let’s have those in there."

The bottom line, for Scalzi, is that value is provided to readers so that they keep coming back. "I’m a big fan of people paying for books."

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.

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I'm an Associate Editor covering science and cutting edge tech.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/03/30/are-apps-the-future-of-book-publishing/
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