App-books to "steamroll over e-books"?

[Anke Wehner]

Well, reading is an event that makes full use of my imagination. Or at least better use than any other form of media consumption.

I'm trying to come up with uses for audio in novels. I read rather a lot of books set in constructed worlds, and those have pronunciation guides for the made-up names in an appendix, sometimes.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

Three words: Carl Sagan Cosmos

Sagan's work is close to non existent in ebook form, and really I am not sure if ePub, or mobi would satisfy the need. I would love to see an "enhanced ebook" built for tablets like iPad, or Xoom for these types of books.

But I agree with most here, for most fiction eink reproductions are all that is required, or desired.

An interactive Cosmos I would buy; especially if it was updated by his widow Ann Druyan or another colleague. (It came out in 1980, and much has been learned in the past 31 years.)

[Jack Tingle]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
...How about they fix the spelling and format errors we see in many e-books first?!

Originally Posted by alecE

Absolutely!

Possibly I'm being a grumpy old Luddite, but I *really like* reading simple, unadorned text which allows total freedom to my own imagination. So yes, maybe a limited market - kids' books being the obvious one. But why embed fixed additional content in the ebook when you could just link to the web?

________

My gods! What a concept! We could invent a totally flexible way to link all kinds of things to everything else. It wouldn't be a text; it would be a ... a ... a HYPERtext!
________

What? It's been done? And they tried enhanced books in the early zeroes? No one bought them, except for the encyclopedias? Huh.

Nevermind.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[Jack Tingle]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I'd just like a more intuitive table of contents or something like that.

Or even a table of contents, period.

Not to mention an index, a glossary, a colophon, a concordance...

None of which show their face until I ask for them. Hypertext allows that. Lazy publishers simply don't do it.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[Donnageddon]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

An interactive Cosmos I would buy; especially if it was updated by his widow Ann Druyan or another colleague. (It came out in 1980, and much has been learned in the past 31 years.)

Yeah, much like the DVD release of the series had the option of viewing the straight original, or be notified of when new information was available and see the updates.

[Leesiegirl]

I'm still wrapping my head around the idea of a jazzed up book. Maybe I think small, but when it comes to fiction, the only sort of jazzing up I might like would be to be the agent of action in the story.

Can you say "text adventure?"

Everything else I might like-the extra maps, maybe a glossary and a character list, and any support material used in world--doesn't really need to be anything more than additional text material attached to the end & a hyperlink menu down the side to click through to this material should I want to reference it.

I was sitting with an iPad and an enchanting 3 year old boy t' other day, trying to read what might be considered an app book with him, but it just wasn't as much fun for him as simply snuggling up and reading a regular sort of book. He was off and away about 1/2 way through the story.

The thing about steamrollers is, they move pretty slow. It's easy to get out of their path and continue reading.