Ebooks, or maybe I should say stories, come in all shapes and sizes: EPUB, apps, virtual reality, games, and more. If you want to see some exciting, innovative new forms of storytelling, check out this list (sure devices have some limitations and enhanced ebooks haven’t exactly taken off yet, but there are ways to make ebooks great):
Ebooks
- “A Digital Mozart Book That Behaves Like an App” on The New York Times
- “An Ebook That Lets You Be a Superhero” on Mumbai Mirror
- “Beneath The Ink: A Portal To Adjacent Content” on Digital Book World
- “DPW Debuts Disney Story Central, a Kids’ E-book Portal” on Publisher’s Weekly
- “The Tom Uglow interview: “Books are the future of books”” on On the Write Track
- “New Platform Senserial Delivers Serialized eBooks” on GoodeReader
- “The Fictionary Adds Book-Specific Dictionaries to Ebooks” on LifeHacker
- “Ebooks are changing the way we read, and the way novelists write” on The Guardian
- “Adaptive Books Ramps Up” on Publisher’s Weekly
- “Ebooks column: Digital readers have added new dimension to world of fiction” on The Irish Times
Apps
- “Karen, an App That Knows You All Too Well” on The New York Times
- Mastering Digital Pipelines – Texture Artist Natsumi Nishi
- Stories Etc.
- The Reaccession of Ted Shawn
- “Wowio Launches New Mobile App” on Publisher’s Weekly
- “Why you need an app to understand my novel” on The Guardian
Websites
- Take This Lollipop
- The Black Chronicle
- “Why Cards Are the Future of the Web” on Intercom
- The Boat
- “If Fictional Characters Could Text, PART FOUR” on Spark Life
- “The YouTube Of Comics: How Tapastic Offers New Publishing Opportunities For Creators And Fans” on Tech Times
Algorithms
- “Nanni Balestrini’s “Tristano”: the love story with 100 trillion possible plotlines” on NewStatesman
- Novel Text Mining
Databases
- Placing Literature: Where Your Book Meets the Map
- “Aural History on the Web: Reconstructing the Past through Sound” on The MIT Press
Shared Worlds
- “Apocalypse Weird brings authors and fans a shared world of pain” on The Guardian
- “Harlequin’s new ‘Chatsfield’ project crosses multiple platforms” on Happy Ever After
Augmented/Virtual Reality
- “Augmented Reality and the Future of Publishing” on Publishing Perspectives
- “Joanna Penn: Virtual reality and the future of publishing” on The Book Seller
- “Virtual Reality Manga Invades J-Pop Summit” on Publisher’s Weekly
Games
- Cloud Chamber
- “A Game as Literary Tutorial” on The New York Times
- Storyteller Game
- Stride & Prejudice
- “Text Games in a New Era of Stories” on The New York Times
- “The secret of Minecraft” on Medium
- “This Video Game Could Revolutionize Publishing—and Reading” on The Atlantic
- “Video games inside of e-books: An idea that’s already here” on Venture Beat
Science and Technology
- “Books and JavaScript stored in DNA molecules” on New Scientist
- Computer-Assisted Authoring of Interactive Narratives
- “Computer-Assisted Authoring of Interactive Narratives” on Disney Research
- “Wearable book lets readers feel the fiction” on CNET
- PliegOS
- “Will Publishers Start Adopting 3D Printed Book Covers as a Marketing Tool?” on GoodeReader
- “Smell-o-phone creator attaches scents to eBooks and songs” on Engadget
- “All Books Come From Trees, This Book Turns Into One” on Good
- Graffica
- “Indie Authors Will Soon Be Using AI to Edit their eBooks” on GoodeReader
- “Atlas, a Humanoid Robot, Takes a Walk in the Woods” on The New York Times
Thank you for voicing your thoughts on the evolution of the ebook. We are just beginning to touch on the possibilities.
And in that vein, I welcome you to take a look at something we have created for the iPad and the Kindle. It is a science-fiction story entitled, “The Plunge of Icarus.” We created this book in a process we have dubbed, Cinenovel, which combines photography with text.
The iPad version has visual effects in the form of subtle fades and dissolves, as well as music and voice over. The Kindle version, at this time, is static. We adapted for the Kindle because we were censored by Apple for 28 frames they said were objectionable content.
You can see some samples at Amazon, just search for The Plunge of Icarus. Naturally, as an indie ebook producer I would welcome any mention as we are eager to create more books.
Thank you,
Jeff