Interactive eBooks – Are They New, or Just Shiny?

There has been a lot of buzz recently about the need for more interactivity in eBooks - specifically, that they can't be "text only." Theoretically those with Kindles, Nooks, and iPads aren't going to buy traditional eBooks. At least not for long. So the publishing industry had better get moving and embed video, audio, puzzles, and more in all eBooks. Those features sound cool to me - and after thinking about it, I realized why. Because Technical Communicators have been producing interactive online manuals and Help for many years. To make our customers more successful, we've been doing the following as best practice:

• Embedding images to make the text easier to understand.
• Linking to informative "how to" video and audio files (and often creating the videos and audio files ourselves).
• Adding interactive graphics (Image Maps) that link to additional information or display useful information in a popup.
• Linking to related information (Topics) in the same online manual/Help.
• Linking to related websites, as well as our company's website. Plus linking to websites that can help the customer find additional help - forums, knowledgebases, and other online communities (those aren't new either).
• Creating dynamic text (links that display more information inline when you click on them.) By "inline" I mean that the additional information appears beside the link, in a popup, or even underneath (expanding/collapsing text).

So Technical Communicators are ahead of the curve on this one. We have the skills and tools, and we know how (and why) to get this done. This trend is just going to make MORE versions of the same "core" material the norm - for example, movie DVDs are expected to ship with extras, but producers still need to provide -- and deliver -- the core product. The movie. Sometimes you just want to watch the movie, not learn that they shot the pool scene when it was freezing outside. Sometimes you just want to read the book, not watch videos of the location the writer is describing. Right now, eBook output formats themselves are still in flux, so I see more challenges wrapped around that issue than delivering a more extensive user experience. That, we know how to do already. Below are posts by Sarah O'Keefe and Alan Porter that discuss eBooks from different angles. Alan does a great job of working Star Trek and "The Wrath of Khan" into a blog post. I've always wanted to do that! (Well, maybe I just did. Thanks Alan!) Tangential Reading: A Contrarian View of the Future of Publishing http://www.scriptorium.com/blog/2010/07/a-contrarian-view-of-the-future-of-publishing.html#more-4289 There's More to eBooks Than Words http://thecontentwrangler.com/2010/07/12/there's-more-to-ebooks-than-words/