Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Will Vooks be the Kindle Killer?

Theres a new story-telling middle in locale that could assistance the iPad put a spike in Kindles coffin: The vook.

A vook (rhymes with book) is an extended digital book that blendstext with audio, full-color video and links to the Internet and socialmedia that element the created word and supplement context. Vooks can beaccessed by the Web or with an focus download for the iPhoneand iTouch, and shortly the iPad.

Only on the marketplace given last fall, this new middle got a giantboost to the credit not long ago when Anne Rice, the high priestess ofVampire Lit, published a multimedia version of her 1984 tale, "TheMaster of Rampling Gate," as a vook.

Her publisher, Vook, that grown the eponymous platform, plans to launch some-more than 500 vook titles this year.

Vook is operative with filmmakers, agents, authors Eric Gower and Seth Godin, and book publisherssuch as Hachette, HarperStudio, and Simon & Schuster to move newvook titles to market. Vooks sell from 99 cents to $6.99.

Kindle killer?

What vooks broach is a loyal multimedia experience that makesKindles immobile gray sort appear rather lifeless by comparison. Vook workswith both authors and filmmakers to emanate the product, nonetheless thedegree of writer impasse varies.

When we did Shakespeares sonnets, he patently wasnt as well concerned in that, pronounced Brad Inman, CEO of Vook.

Though vooks are height dubious by design, the association clearlybelieves the iPad will be vooks honeyed spot. Inman calls the new formatthe finish of gray and believes that the iPad will be the tipping point.

Im positively betting on it," Inman told TechNewsDaily. Welaunched Anne Rice on the iPhone. Suddenly Anne Rices story isdistributed in a all new approach to an wholly new audience. Andthats usually a small device. Imagine a bigger device.

Inman believes the iPad will give audiences a new approach to experiencegreat stories. Even if the device itself isnt a home run, he said, itcould fire the route for identical multimedia devices.It creates huge foe by well-financed companies, he said.If these things take off and people buy them, I dont think the othercompanies are going to mount by.

Others removing in to the act

Vook is not the usually association expecting an iPad bullion rush. Earlierthis month at the Financial Times Digital Media & BroadcastingConference in London, Penguin Books CEO John Makinson demonstratedsamples of the interactive e-bookshis association is scheming for the iPad. Penguin has pronounced it expects thate-books will comment for 10 percent of the sales subsequent year.

Ironically, one of the titles Makinson demonstrated was from Penguin/Razorbill Books Vampire Academy series.

"The clarification of the book itself is up for grabs, Makinson toldattendees. We will be formulating a lot of the calm as applicationsfor sale on app stores and HTML, rather than in e-books. We will beembedding audio, video and streaming in to all we do."

The proliferation of pick electronic celebration of the mass and viewingdevices and formats is causing high stress in normal dead-treepublishing. Do these new inclination symbol the finish of novel as we knowit? Will the Kindle turn highway kill on the report superhighway?

Vooks Inman doesnt think so. He records that the key of the PCdidnt hurt writing. What he sees is event and new hold up forliterature. The vook will stick on paper books, audio books, and e-books asoptions for readers.

This is some-more about adding value, giving readers alternatives,"Inman said. Its additionally about exposing functions that are passed somewhere inwarehouses, giving them new life. I think the a approach of compelling newtitles. If this were going to cannibalize storytelling, I would neverhave proposed the venture. I proposed as a journalist, so great calm isimportant to me."

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