Some publishers aren’t scared of new technologies – they are finding ways to use mobile applications to enhance the reading experience.
The Little, Brown paperback edition of Iain M Banks’s latest novel, Transition, comes with a unique barcode. Scan the barcode with your iPhone and it will download companion features for the novel — unseen chapters, author’s notes and commentary, and an annotated list of characters.
Rival publisher Canongate:
“… is no slouch in the digital department itself, … launching a (paid-for) enhanced iPhone app for Nick Cave’s novel The Death of Bunny Munro … complete with videos of Cave and an audio version synched to the text of the book, scored by Cave himself.”
Smart business.
Infographic showing relative proportions of printed and digital materials lent by US libraries. Data source: ALA. Infographic published in the Wall Street Journal (click image for full article)
Libraries, too, are embracing e-books. Led by the Internet Archive a group of US lending libraries have set up OpenLibrary.org, a web site for borrowing e-books.
Geoffrey Fowler writes in the Wall Street Journal that the OpenLibrary catalogue includes access to “more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles available at many public libraries.”
The digital collection will include scans of out-of-print books that can still be found on library shelves. Each title can be borrowed by only one person at a time; if the e-book version is checked out, then the corresponding printed edition will not be available for loan.
Tags: ebooks, books, publishing, library, reading, OpenLibrary