We’re swiftly coming into the golden age of eBooks. For those of us that have been reading them on our PDAs and smartphones for years, it seems like it’s taken quite awhile to get to this point. All of a sudden, eReaders are popping up all over the place, with the Kindle 2, Sony’s eReader and others. So now, just as everyone has gotten used to eBooks, we are going to start seeing vooks. What is a vook? It merges eBooks and videos into a complete story. While you read the book, you can watch embedded videos that enhance the story. Right now there are only 4 titles to choose from, a workout book, cooking book, romance and thriller. They can be read on your computer or your iPhone. What do you think, will this new format take off? I think it could work for text books, DIY type books and non-fiction, but for fiction, I think the embedded videos might be distracting.
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
I agree that it would work great for non-fiction books. Cookbooks and home-repair books could be greatly enhanced by some videos demonstrating procedures. My blood runs cold at the thought of videos in some of those romance books, though! The descriptions can be explicit enough without the visuals! Not that I’ve read any of them or anything… 🙂
@JanetCinNC Uh huh, sure 😉
I think the greatest implication will be in first aid books.
Just a natural evolution! Great and looking forward to them – may be the books our children receive for school and University will at least save them from ending up with such poor tutelage at times – insert applause for a commonsense development. Hey, I’m sure all those out-of-work actors are excited too! I’m going to check them out now – bring on the VOOK!!! How can I invest?!?!
Interesting idea. Could have lots of possibilities. Certainly as others have pointed out it has wonderful applications for instruction manuals, repair manuals and so on. Let’s just hope they don’t figure out how to squeeze an advert or two in the middle of your favorite paperback (or classic novel).
What will the verb be? Do you “retch” or “watead” a vook?
Nothing new here. I’ve been subscribing to fully downloaded electronic magazines for years now and there are already plenty of embedded videos in a lot of them. In fact some are even adverts, but mostly informative of a products performance rather than the hard sell. I haven’t always felt the need to watch the embedded video in stories but they are sometimes useful.
Mostly though I find it an unwelcome distraction when I’m following a story line. Like an info box in a magazine that you have to either read at an inconvenient point or go back to when the main story is finished. I think there will be some real art form to introducing the video scene at exactly the right moment without long load pauses, and heaven help them if they decide to prelude it with an advert as I could be frustrated to the point of causing those responsible permanent injury 🙂
I think this could help the publishing industry have different levels of offerings. If you just want text, then great it’s $9.99 or so.
If you want multi-media, then it’s back to higher price point because the costs are higher.
It’s probably a long road for these to be done for every title…but an interesting development just the same.
My guess is some derivation of “vooks” is what Steve Jobs has his eye on eventually.