Turn the Page, Click the Link, See the Video
Hybrid books appeal to young, tech-savvy readers, but do the instant visuals stunt their imagination?
The mysterious man looks completely wrong to me.
In the text of the conspiracy thriller "Embassy," an online novel by Richard Doetsch, the character is described as "a starkly thin fellow with a protruding Adam's apple." My brain goes: Alan Rickman!
But when I click on the chapter's accompanying video, the man is younger, tanner, scruffier. He's dressed like he should be bumming clove cigarettes at a concert, not spying on the Greek Embassy.
What I'm reading is a Vook -- a video/book hybrid produced in part by Simon & Schuster's Atria Books. Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative. In one chapter, the Greek ambassador receives a mysterious DVD, and readers must click on an embedded video to learn what's on it. In another, kidnapper Jack ominously tells his hostage that he's going to prove that he means business.
"How are you going to do that?" Kate asks.
"Are you squeamish?" Jack replies.
Below that dialogue, a box encourages readers to "SEE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" by clicking the play button.
Vooks represent just a few examples of a new genre that has been dubbed v-books, digi-books, multimedia books and Cydecks, all with essentially the same concept: It's a book . . . but wait, there's more!
Is a hybrid book our future? "As discourse moves from printed pages to network screens, the dominant mode will be things that are multi-modal and multilayered," says Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book. "The age of pure linear content is going to pass with the rise of digital network content."
Predicting the eventual death of the traditional novel sounds practically heretical. But the genre has actually existed in English for only about 300 years, and experimentation and evolution have always been a part of the way we tell stories. Perhaps the folly isn't in speculating that the book might change, but in assuming that it won't.
Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book, says that whatever assumptions we make now about hybrid books likely won't hold true when the medium grows up.
"Things like the Vook are trivial. We're going to see an explosion of experimentation before we see a dominant new format. We're at the very beginning stages" of figuring out what narrative might look like in the future. "The very, very beginning."
READ MORE ! @ L A Times: 1/01/10 by Monica Hesse
Hybrid books appeal to young, tech-savvy readers, but do the instant visuals stunt their imagination?
The mysterious man looks completely wrong to me.
In the text of the conspiracy thriller "Embassy," an online novel by Richard Doetsch, the character is described as "a starkly thin fellow with a protruding Adam's apple." My brain goes: Alan Rickman!
But when I click on the chapter's accompanying video, the man is younger, tanner, scruffier. He's dressed like he should be bumming clove cigarettes at a concert, not spying on the Greek Embassy.
What I'm reading is a Vook -- a video/book hybrid produced in part by Simon & Schuster's Atria Books. Interspersed throughout the text are videos and links that supplement the narrative. In one chapter, the Greek ambassador receives a mysterious DVD, and readers must click on an embedded video to learn what's on it. In another, kidnapper Jack ominously tells his hostage that he's going to prove that he means business.
"How are you going to do that?" Kate asks.
"Are you squeamish?" Jack replies.
Below that dialogue, a box encourages readers to "SEE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT" by clicking the play button.
Vooks represent just a few examples of a new genre that has been dubbed v-books, digi-books, multimedia books and Cydecks, all with essentially the same concept: It's a book . . . but wait, there's more!
Is a hybrid book our future? "As discourse moves from printed pages to network screens, the dominant mode will be things that are multi-modal and multilayered," says Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book. "The age of pure linear content is going to pass with the rise of digital network content."
Predicting the eventual death of the traditional novel sounds practically heretical. But the genre has actually existed in English for only about 300 years, and experimentation and evolution have always been a part of the way we tell stories. Perhaps the folly isn't in speculating that the book might change, but in assuming that it won't.
Stein, of the Institute for the Future of the Book, says that whatever assumptions we make now about hybrid books likely won't hold true when the medium grows up.
"Things like the Vook are trivial. We're going to see an explosion of experimentation before we see a dominant new format. We're at the very beginning stages" of figuring out what narrative might look like in the future. "The very, very beginning."
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