Book 2.0: Interactive Books Are Coming To an e-Reader near you

We have heard about the concept of book 2.0 for years now. The good old books that most of us have grown up with are anything but interactive. While that wouldn’t be a problem all by itself, there are certain situations where an interactive book can provide more value to its readers than a regular book. Take kids books for example. Wouldn’t it be nice if kids could interact with their books to have more fun and learn things more effectively? The future is all about book 2.0. We are talking about interactive, dynamic content and even videos getting packaged with e-books. It’s no secret that Amazon Kindle and other top e-Readers are currently incapable of handling such dynamic content. The focus of those devices is to provide a better reading experience to their users and not necessarily handle dynamic content. Apple plans to change all that with the iPad. The iBooks is going to be unlike any other e-book store on the market. As publishers have suggested in the past, many dynamic books are expected to make their way to the store, giving iPad owners plenty of titles to choose from.

Penguin Books is one of many publishers that are expected to bring their dynamic content to the iPad. The company is expected to increase its sales from 4% to 10% thanks to the market that is being created by Apple. The publisher is pretty ambitious with its plan. As John Makinson, the company’s chief, put it, Penguin Books’ focus will be on dynamic content and innovation:

We will be embedding and streaming audio, video and gaming into everything we do. This will present us and the platform owners with technology challenges…. The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.

Those are exactly my thoughts. What we have come to accept as a “book” may not be the best way to consume content and pick up new information. Some people, including myself, will still prefer regular books to dynamic books. But these companies can’t know what consumers are willing to pay for unless they try different things. This dynamic platform that Apple is working on and will soon be replicated or adopted by other retailers will allow for more innovation and better quality content quality to make way to the market. Besides, consumers could have more ways to communicate with publishers and make themselves heard. Book 2.0 is not going to work for everyone. Nevertheless, it’s the future, so we may as well give it a chance.