Interactive Reading

The Future of Publishing

I've been paying attention to the little publishing innovation in  the video above. It's called a "vook", a file/reader similar to eBooks, but it has a multimedia twist. A vook will allow a reader to not only read a book, but also to follow supplementary videos, pictures, and information.

Definitely something worth looking into.

But as I look into vooks more and more, I find that they offer quite a bit for the future of publishing. For instance, the vook allows supplementary videos and the ability to communicate user thoughts via social media, but what if it did more? 

Take Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson for example:
Already there are multiple editions of the novel as well as a thrilling motion picture starring Johnny Depp. If one searches hard enough, it is rather easy to find supplementary articles and recordings with the author. 

But what if vooks allowed it all to be in one place? Not only that, but what if vooks allowed the reader a choice?
It sounds like a worthy concept to be explored as technology progresses. The reader could either simply read the novel, or add in the supplementary sources for further exploration. For me, sometimes I just want to be entertained by a good story. At other times, I want to completely submerge myself with everything that went into the book. 

Let's take the technology a bit further, to the academic side of the world. One of the weakness of both eBooks, and vooks is that the reader cannot make annotations. Newer variations of eReader's like the Barnes & Noble nook allow the user to make small highlights and notes, but it's really akin to sending grammatically correct text messages through the old Motorola Razr. Remember when things looked like "i went 2 mall @12 2day 4 sum shoes"? We should be thankful that newer mobile devices allow us to sound like intelligent human beings rather than primitive robots. 

And when it comes to being an intellectual, there's always research involved. Say a student or professor needs to write an article surrounding a certain text. What if you could find more information surrounding any subject? For Hunter S. Thompson, the researcher could find biographical, literary criticism, etc. For an analysis on the effects of cheese, a researcher could find related articles through a side search database like JSTOR, including reports, graphs & charts, and more. 

To recap:
1. Book + Supplement when you want it.
2. Annotation + Research

The aforementioned ideas are just two concepts I have regarding the evolution of eBooks and vooks (which I hope to see merge so we all don't have to shall more moolah for devices), whereas many more exist. These are simply some thoughts I wanted to share with the world. It seems like every second, someone could add an innovative feature to these technologies, but let's see how they catch up to our expectations. 

Best of all, technological innovations such as vooks and eBooks allow for more interactivity. More interactivity drawls a larger audience. A larger audience reading is a good thing. More reading means more thinking, which is also a good thing.