[Apache]

Originally Posted by maddz

Why would you want to add bells and whistles to an ebook? Perhaps for a kiddies book (I am reminded of some Disney book & record combos I had in my childhood), but not for something that's being read for pleasure or education (unless you are thinking of embedded videos for manuals of one kind or another - but that's what Utube is for).

Integration with an onboard dictionary in your ereader, and perhaps the ability to make notes (and more importantly, to export those notes) is about the only thing you would need (and they are hardware/firmware issues). Frankly, anything else is superfluous - and involves stuff that's not available to many ereaders - like web enablement (not every ereader is connected to the internet all the time). The other big issue is most ereaders are e-ink devices and not amenable to high-end graphics, and such bells and whistles add to battery drain.

Of course, if you mean something like the old Infocom text adventures (Zork, etc) I'd be up for that!

Originally Posted by meeera

The most engaging books for me are those with excellent writing. On a side note, I also prefer books that "get out of my way"; that don't have fiddly formatting that might go wrong on my ereader, or try to override my preferred settings. (Yes, I know how to override these bad design choices myself, but I'd prefer not to have to).

Stick to an unobtrusive but well-designed chapter sink graphic and/or scene break ornament if you want to make your book's formatting "original". An example is the cute little Aeslin mice graphic in Seanan McGuire's Incryptid books.

The best thing you can do for your book, apart from excellent writing and professional editing of course, is invest in a good cover.

Originally Posted by darryl

Anyone who has watched a child play on a tablet knows that this content already exists. though It isn't often called a book. It may be called a webpage or a game or a video or simply interactive multimedia. And it has its place. But please, not on my e-ink reader. I just want to read.



On the contrary, epub and other formats allow many of these things. The reason why they are not often used in an ebook is that in most cases they do not improve the text but distract from it. The "books" that are suitable for this are much better packaged as a multimedia package for a tablet or even a computer. I don't want the world wide web on my ereader. I just want to read.

All of the above.
Apache