Amazon Updates Textbook Creator App

A major update for the Kindle Textbook Creator app has made the platform more useful, according to blogger Nate Hoffelder. The updated app allows educators to embed video and audio files in e-textbooks and now supports pop-up images.

“I’ve tested the app and I can confirm that you can embed audio,” Hoffelder wrote for Inks, Bits, & Pixels. “The app freezes while the media is being embedded in the project e-book file (it takes a while), but then it unlocks and lets you move the audio icon or video window around. You can also change the media’s title or description.”

Amazon added new options for building a table of contents and using a checkbox to choose which pages are added to the table of contents. Kindle Textbook Creator is specific to the Kindle platform but creates e-books that can be read on the Kindle app for Android, iOS, PC, and OSX.

“Amazon already sold digital textbooks and now they are also making it easier for educators to publish their own textbooks on the Kindle platform,” Hoffelder said. “It’s hard to say what is coming next, but I think we can expect Amazon to make a play for schools and the curricula market.”

Soundtracks for EBooks?

Yes, that is correct. Just as sound and music enhances the emotional impact of movies and television shows, New York City-based startup Booktrack is trying to do the same for ebooks. With an iOS app already in the market and an Adroid app on the way, Booktrack allows ebook readers to listen to ambient background noise relevant to the book's current setting, specific sound effects synchronized to the text as it is read. 

Will this new twist on audiobooks entice people to read more in digital formats?   Probably unlikely.  However, it is another step in the slow transition or evolution of digital reading materials, and the technology is likely to find a usage.  More power to it if it does. On a side note Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, is the lead investor of Booktrack.

Reading a book via four formats: paperback, Kindle, audiobook, and iPhone

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured an article about Ann Kirschner’s experience reading a book via four formats: paperback, Kindle, audiobook, and iPhone. Kirschner, university dean of William E. Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York and resident of NYC, decided to switch amongst the four reading options as she went about her daily routine. She notes, “It was often maddening to keep finding and losing my place as I switched from format to format. But as an experiment, it taught me a great deal about my reading habits, and about how a text reveals itself differently as the reading context changes. Along the way, I also began to make some predictions about winners and losers in the evolution of books.” She went on to say, “I’ve been dreading this, but let me get my prediction out now: The iPhone is a Kindle killer…I abandoned the Kindle edition of Little Dorrit almost as soon as I read one chapter on my iPhone. Kindle, shmindle. It does almost nothing that an iPhone can’t do better — and most important, the iPhone is always with me.” The article is very interesting and worth a read.

Advice from Peter Osnos

Last week, Shelf Awareness featured a conversation with Peter Osnos, founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs and founder of The Caravan Project. In the piece, Osnos explains that he sees a bright future for the book world because as technology advances a book publishing model is developing that will make it possible for readers to buy books in any format they choose – traditional, e-books, print-on-demand, or audio, and he envisions that this could take place in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. He does however, have concerns about booksellers who, "still have not yet accepted that digital delivery is a good thing and that it can be part of what they do. There isn't any reason any bookseller cannot completely embrace digital delivery." His advice for people in the industry is to "step back and think of themselves as civilians and appreciate the extent to which we always look for convenience and quality. It doesn't mean that 100% of people will read online and that the printed book is doomed. It means that there will be choices and options, and it's essential that publishers and booksellers be a part of that." Embracing digital delivery and recognizing the opportunities and options it provides is especially important advice for college stores. We do not have time to wait because if college stores do not provide content options in the formats that students desire, someone else will.

Audio e-books DRM free

Overdrive announced this week in a press release that they would be increasing their inventory and capability to distribute mp3 audio books to booksellers and libraries. Borders will be one of the first stores to have this capability added to their repetoire at the concept stores. Overdrive is already an interesting player in the digital content space, perhaps best known for their works with libraries and the IDPF standards group. In this latest announcement it is not the ability to download the content onto the iPod/iPhone, or thousands of other MP3 players that is of interest (although that is interesting). Instead, the most interesting aspect of this press release is their indication that they will allow these downloads without DRM. This is a great move forward, as others have noted the problems and complexity DRM creates in the marketplace. We have seen similar movement in the past few months in the music industry as well. Chalk up one for the consumer!



OverDrive to Distribute MP3 Audiobooks to Booksellers and Libraries
Download audiobooks compatible with iPod, Zune, and thousands of MP3 players