Are digital books more than just electronic ink on a screen? It seems that everything is multimedia, and books fall into that category too. More than just a good story, add music and video and stir together into an even fuller experience. Add to that an online book club and twitter to share your thoughts on a book, magazine, or article, and the written experience is now interactive, too. This is exciting stuff.
New startups, like Vook.tv, WEbook, Fourth Story Media, and others are emerging to enhance the move from written page to digital experience. That means that the Kindle and Sony e-reader are just the first baby steps to a brand new experience. "Ms. Nelson (Sara Nelson, former editor of Publishers Weekly) has seen the Vook prototype and says it is intriguing, but the challenge is to avoid feeling gimmicky. 'If you are going to put video in a book, it has to flow so naturally into the story that readers don’t even realize they are switching mediums,' she said."
Perhaps that is what Facebook and other social networks need to tie into next. Expanding the interactive experience with other types of content, but centralize the experience on your main social page. That partnership could quicken the acceptance of these new products.
