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You will know by now how much I love new technologies and publishing!
A few weeks ago, I bought ‘Embassy' as an iPhone app, one of the first Vooks from Simon & Schuster. I enjoyed it and I can see the amazing potential with this platform. I was so excited when Vook agreed to an interview for the podcast, so here it is!
Matthew Cavnar is Brand Director at Vook, a company producing books with new technology blending ebooks and video to create a whole new experience for the reader. They have recently launched the first 4 Vooks with Simon & Schuster.
In this podcast you will learn:
- What is a Vook anyway? A new innovation that blends a book with videos and connects with social media to create a whole new experience in story.
- What the first Vooks are about and which genres were targeted
- How ‘Return to Beauty' was picked up by women's health- Vital Juice – health and lifestyle. Natural facial creams that show you how to make them. The videos are showing you how-to and even take your mobile device to the store.
- How the romantic fiction Vook ‘Promises' by Jude Deveraux was on the front page of the iPhone app store, which is a huge boost for sales
- The aim of the videos are to bring the story to life for the fiction, increase immersion into the story
- How the company Vook got started, and their partnership with publishers to deliver video experiences in this new genre. How the vision for this new publishing venture came into being and the excitement of being involved with a new invention!
- The possibilities that the Vook enables are exciting – what could the future look like when books can go multi-media on hand-held devices? Think about travel books, cookery books and also story enhancing videos… there is so much potential!
- This is video supporting books – not a fully-fledged film set producing movies. The story has to support the concept of video.
- How doing a video of the author really enhanced the Vook, and some potential applications for this for future Vooks, including having a book club in your Vook, or Vooks that just feature author interviews for future book releases.
- A brief discussion on the price point for the Vooks – premium products cost more.
- What is the potential for self-published authors to use the Vook platform? Vook specializes in producing high-quality video right now, but the company is very new and they are looking at possibilities.
- What is the future of ebooks and where does Vook fit? Technology is catching up and the (possible) Apple tablet is possibly the break though device where technology catches up with ideas. There's room for different technologies though and text-only devices are still appealing, like the Kindle.
Another good show and as usual very good technical execution. I am a bit perplexed by the chest thumping over the ‘Vook’. One of the defining hallmarks of Web 2.0 is interactive, multimedia content. For example, I read news stories on CNN with the option to click on video, photos or audio content that extend and add to my reading experience. It would be very easy to implement a homemade ‘Vook’ using off the shelf HTML editors, webpage creation tools or even applications such as Keynote or Power Point. I really don’t see the need for special technologies to produce multimedia books. That said, I trust we will see future developments that utilize technologies not currently available insuring we never get a chance to be bored.
Keep up the great work.
Sam
iNetSynch.com