One of my favorite social sites is Quora. It is populated by some very smart people answering and asking questions. One of the questions that came across my path today is ‘What Features Make an Enhanced Ebook?’ Here is my answer:
There are varying shades of interpretations for ‘ebook’, ‘enhanced book’ and ‘interactive book’. Because the line is more blurry when describing the first two, I’ve come up with my own term, ‘ehanced’.
An ebook is the most basic form of a digital book. It is primarily text based. It usually, but not always, will include an illustration or photograph on the cover. It usually will allow for text reflow, variable font sizing and searchable text.
An enhanced ebook can be a hybrid of ebook and interactive book. If an ebook contains audio or video, it is enhanced. Look for more enhanced books as epub3 gains in popularity.
Interactive books are more ‘book apps’ than ebooks. They can provide many features such as A/V, read-to-me, touch, coloring and more. They are usually fixed layout formats. Children’s books are a very popular genre for interactive titles.
If you haven’t joined Quora, but would like to help someone find an answer to their question, or have a question of your own, join in.
I welcome your comments.
Trapdoor Books: Doing Enhanced eBooks Right
Do a search on Google for enhanced ebooks and you will find that there’s a divergence of opinion on them. The main critique falls into three areas.
The first opinion states that enhanced ebooks with embedded video, sound and graphics, takes away from the enjoyment of the book because the enhanced ebook intrudes on the reader’s ability to imagine the story in his mind. The very popular Harry Potter books loved by children are used as a prime example.
This opinion states that any attempt to add greater dimensions to the Harry Potter story telling like the movies takes away from the imagination of the children. But that’s a false argument.
Sure, when a child reads a Harry Potter book, he or she congers up a vivid picture in their mind of the characters and environment in the book. Those critics hold that the movies made from those books somehow take away from that imagination process.
But if that were true, how do you account form the hundreds of millions of dollars each book in the series has generated as a movie? And most of the audience for these movies are the children that read the Harry Potter book. The children enjoyed both versions of the story telling and it did little to take way their imagination of the story.
Of course, the professional handling of the book material by the movie studio did the story justice. As in anything creative – it has bee done well.
The second critique of enhanced ebooks comes from those that say the imbedded multimedia and extended material interrupts the reading experience. They claim, rightfully so, that the embedded video, audio and links to the Internet within the text interrupts the reading of the book. But Trapdoor Books has recognized this problem and placed its multimedia and outside links in what is called the ‘marginalia’ that sits along the outside column of the text. This marginalia can be totally turned off and the reader can read just text.
The third critique has nothing to do with the reading experience. It has to do with economics — the cost of producing enhanced ebooks. This is a valid critique. It does cost more to produce an enhanced book. Thus the retail cost of the ebook is higher than the traditional ebook.
But Trapdoor Books has found a solution to that. Their enhanced books are FREE. They are advertising supported and that revenue pays for the production of the ebook.
So, Trapdoor Books has found the way to meet the objections of the enhanced book skeptics.
http://trapdoortechnologies.com/