Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
I can't really figure why anyone would want it. I don't want moving pictures in my books. I just want to read. Really, for what I read I'd just as soon have Mobi format. It gives me everything I need in a book. What's with this constant changing of formats anyway?
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It's an experiment or proof of concept by Amazon. I can imagine that they were looking to demonstrate that their platform had some of the capabilities of Apple's iBooks Author format, which among other things, gave us Harry Potter with animated illustrations, somewhat as the magical books and portraits at Hogwarts were. It is only a modest extension of what KF8 was capable of since its inception.
I've tried several of the titles (as a KU subscriber, they can be borrowed for free) and while there is some novelty to it (I would recommend 'The Secret Garden'), it does not seem to expand creative possibilities all that much.
The formatting turns to crap on Kindles (drop caps break, too wide line spacing etc.). I just tried the updated Wool Omnibus on my Voyage: yep, still an issue. They need to fix that. And on tablets, I'd like to see support for landscape: as it is, it only uses half the screen.
To get it out of the 'experiment' phase, Amazon need to release authoring tools (or a specification that would allow building using existing tools).