Hooo, boy.
Well, for those of you that haven't been heavily involved in the "eBook industry" over the last decade, let me introduce you to "The Immersedition."
http://immersedition.com/
The Immersedition broke onto the scene in 2013, with the book "The Survivors" by Amanda Hayward. (I have this enhanced media tome, on my iPad.)
This had every bell and whistle that you could imagine. Inside this, you could:
- Click for Character Bios;
- Click to see adverts for shoes, handbags, men's clothing, you name it;
- click to hear music played, from bands like Coldplay, and,
- with a click, BUY IT!
- Other disguised adverts also existed.
- You could see maps,
- illustrations,
- and so on.
I never did find out what it cost (reliably) to produce, but I was told that it was in the $300-$500K range. And heck, this didn't even have commercial illos and the like, or animated movies, yadda. This was just a book that put the hammy "product placement" of TV and movies to downright shame, mixed in with some legit additional content.
And...what happened with this newest, latest and greatest "evolution" of the book? As far as I know, it fell flat on its ass. Why? For the same reason that this thread shows about as much enthusiasm for "enhanced" eBooks--readers have pretty much zip interest in making "movies" out of their books, or adding this or that gizmo, etc.
We're readers, not short-attention-span-theater seat-fidgeters that can't focus on something for 5 minutes.
AND, to me, that's the bigger issue that people instinctively react to, without even analyzing it--what's being discussed here is creating reading environments that create even more opportunites for children and other readers to learn how to NOT focus and pay attention to more-involved or more-detailed thought processes, like those found in a deep book. We already have an entire generation or two, it seems, of young people who have the attention span of a two-year-old. They've learned how NOT to read.
Forums like TVWOP have disappeared into the mists of time, the stated reason being that people weren't interested in "long-form" posting any longer--seriously.
So, we're seriously sitting here discussing creating apps/books/whatever that will encourage even
less of a requirement
to read and focus for an uninterrupted period of time? Because we're going to
SQUIRREL try to attract their attention
SQUIRREL with more
bright shiny things?
Count me out, brother. I want my books to BE BOOKS. If I want to see someone else's idea of what that book should look like, fine, I'll go see the Movie or the made-for-TV miniseries or whatever. I don't need character bios, I don't need the history of place, and so on. If I'm reading a book and I want to find out the history of Lower Slobbovia, I can look that up online, or,
gasp, in a BOOK at my home.
I fully understand how some folks might want character bios, or whatever, but the comments that have been made about what it takes to do that, in a non-spoiler way, are
quite real. We've been involved with trying to make CYOA game-books, and man, what a bloody headache that is. And they are, by their nature, (in eBook environs) limited. You also can't really "hide" the other paths and choices from them, either. That means, in order for these bios, etc., to be useful, and to not ruin a book for the person using them, they have to be "staged" so as to not give away the character's future actions. "Progressive" bios, as it were, along with maps, illos, so on and so forth.
Anyway...as far as I know, the Hayward book was the sole Immersedition that was ever made. I've never heard of another. I had a woman, at the time, that got completely wrapped up in the idea of Immerseditions, and decided that this was going to be the future of ebooks, and put her entire career into trying to get schools to pay for these types of eBooks, and last I heard, she was looking for a gig for minimum wage. Not a good choice, as it turned out.
While I wouldn't wish the Immersedition people ill, I'm glad it didn't catch. If books were all like that today, I'd be a pretty unhappy camper, unless the feature existed to turn it ALL off.
And as stated, I don't think that either encouraging people to have even less of an attention span, or catering to those that already prefer NOT to think deeply, is a great idea. Schools are already making reading the classics a thing of the past, eliminating the reading books that take that type of in-depth, detailed focus and thought from the curricula--to the detriment of those students (and their future employers), might add. Why make it worse?
What's next? A "serial" book, sent out in 144-character tweets, ffs, with movies, videos, games and other fun surprises, inbetween? God help me,
NO.
My $.02, FWIW.
HItch