Tag-Archive for » E-books «
24
May 2010
May 2010
16
Apr 2010
Apr 2010
Nathan Bransford’s excellent blog directed my attention to the Alice in Wonderland app for the iPad, which pushes past current e-book boundaries. The visuals are beautiful and look outrageously fun to play with.
Alice For the iPad
All kinds of books would be enhanced with this technology, but I’d love to see this interactivity with a book like Ender’s Game. Playing with formations in the battle room, anyone? Speculative fiction is definitely going to benefit from more e-books like Alice as interactivity rises.
06
Apr 2010
Apr 2010
Now that the iPad has officially launched, there’s lots of talk about how e-reader competitors will respond. Their best bet seems to be addressing readers’ concerns about the iPad before Apple can respond with an updated model that takes advantage of the e-book market. One of the main problems serious readers have with the iPad is the LCD screen, which is hard to read in direct sunlight and contributes to eye strain. E-ink displays, like those seen on the Kindle and Nook, are much easier on the eyes and can be read in sunlight. Skeptics say that despite these boons, the black and white screens are the soon-to-be-extinct dinosaurs of the industry.
But e-ink has already begun its evolution. The black-and-white screens of the Kindle and Sony Reader will eventually be overtaken by the color e-ink currently being developed by Liquavista, Blio, Asus, and others. It’s hard to say if Amazon or Barnes & Noble have considered adding color e-ink to the next generation of Kindles and Nooks; in any case, they will eventually need to add this feature if they want to compete with e-ink or LCD color screens that are flooding the market. With color options, the industry-leading e-readers will be able to compete in the textbook market and possibly in the development of enhanced e-books. Though it’s true that the iPad addresses a different part of the market with its internet capabilities, its dominance in the e-reader arena is not guaranteed, especially with color e-ink on the rise.
30
Mar 2010
Mar 2010
Adam flinched as something hissed in the dark hallway. He grabbed a heavy stone pedestal and jammed it against the door, nearly unending the gargoyle statute sitting on top.
A video, nestled within the e-book’s text, begins to run with slow, grainy flickering. It shows smoke floating under a thick wooden door, twisting upwards to wrap around a gargoyle statue perched on a low pedestal. The statute slowly blinks and then grins widely up at you, the reader, before springing out at the camera.
Dream or reality? On the dominant e-readers of today (the Kindle and Nook) this scenario is fiction. Embedded video is not supported by Amazon’s AMZ-formatted books. The Nook uses the popular ePub format – which can support embedded video – but does not support videos on the device. Apple’s iPad offers a potential step forward, utilizing the ePub format while also possessing the capability to run videos.
It is not clear, however, if the iPad will make use of this capability. Steve Jobs announced that there will be no Flash support on the first generation of the iPad. This poses a problem to potential author/videographers, as Flash is the most popular format for videos embedded into ePub files. Unless the iPad offers Flash in a later generation, it may be only another baby step toward fully-integrated collaborations between authors and other artists.
What if a device launches that does support embedded Flash video? Would you, as an author, be interested in inserting video into your novel? On one hand, the concept is compelling because video could add intense visuals to help establish and maintain a novel’s mood. Add too many videos, however, and they could smother well-crafted description and take away the reader’s opportunity to imagine the story in their own way. As we wait for new generations of the iPad and its competitors to provide a video option, it is worth examining the potential new art of mixing novels and videos, and how it would affect creativity and quality.
Category: Artists, E-books, Technology
Tags: Collaboration, E-books, iPad, Technology Leave a Comment
18
Mar 2010
Mar 2010
In my last post, I mentioned the emerging possibilities of authors and artists working together to create a new kind of enriched e-book. Scott Westerfield seems to have taken a step in that direction with the release of his young adult novel “Leviathan.” Westerfield worked with Keith Thompson, an artist who produced fifty black and white illustrations (most full-page) to visually represent the world of Leviathan. Combined with a gorgeous cover rich with colorful steampunk art, Thompson’s illustrations made it impossible for me to resist picking up the book as I passed it in the store. The e-book also contains the illustrations, though the cover would not be displayed in color on the e-readers of today. Perhaps this is where the iPad will start establishing its dominance before moving into the interactive possibilities of e-books.
Westerfield was interviewed about collaboration, and Thompson added his own experiences with the year-long illustration process. This time period, which seems to be a typical length (according to other illustrators), means that any author/artist partnership needs to be a serious consideration early in the writing process. But when an author is not sure that his or her novel will even get published, or that a publishing house would agree to print the art with the book, why even consider this option? I’m sure many speculative fiction writers would jump at the chance to illustrate their creations, if these problems could be overcome; I certainly would. Though an untested model (as far as I know), e-books may step in to bypass this stopgap.
16
Mar 2010
Mar 2010