Is interactive media the future for books?

No, no it isn't.

I love interactive media. I do. It is an endless source of fascination to me, and I am always interested in the new developments emerging. There are some incredibly creative people out there, in various industries, working on uniquely engaging and multi-faceted projects. Its great. From digital magazines to interactive storytelling modules, to the increasingly interactive gameplay allowed through devices such as the kinect and wii, interactive media is becoming more prominent in various sectors.

However, I do spend a lot of time really questioning the viability of different forms of interactive media, especially when it comes to publishing. For example, a company, I believe it may have been GQ, did an interactive magazine, where you could scan various parts of the magazine and interact with them online, and different ways of engaging with the magazine would engender a different online experience and so forth. And while I was watching the video I was thinking, well, thats cool, but where do you go from there? What is the point? Is this really going to engage the consumer in a way that is more substantial than “well, this is neat” and is it simply going to engender the response: “it is more effort and not really worth my time”. For example, wouldn’t a reader who is buying a magazine rather just read it, instead of needing to find a computer that can scan it in order to engage with the entirety of the content?

I went to a lecture recently put on by the PPA Scotland (you can actually read more about what myself and my other classmates though about that here), which was focused on Digital Media, and actually gave me a far more positive view on the future of digital (interactive) media as it relates to magazine publishing specifically. The speakers managed to move beyond the typical flashy, one-hit-wonder aspect of magazine apps and deal with real questions of reader engagement and what determines the viability of apps. Touching on questions of what the relationship between print and digital is and can be, the presentations focused on the importance of the right content for the right platform, the greater potential for innovation and risk-taking in digital publications, and the question of finding and retaining an audience. However, while I now have much greater faith in the viability of digital media in terms of magazine publishing, I still have a lot of questions about its future in terms of book publishing.

At several points in my masters, the question has come up about what we can do with books, what publishers need to consider when doing ebooks, how they can add value to attract consumers. And honestly, I can’t think of anything. I’ve been thinking about this for months, and while I can think of certain things you can do for adult readers - I have seen book apps that you can interact with to see the author’s original notes and whatnot - these are only going to really appeal to the dedicated reader. Similarly, interactive books don’t really seem to be something, to me, that are viable with an adult audience, nor that should necessarily be introduced to children - I’m sure every kid today wants a tablet, but that is not necessarily the best medium to be teaching kids to read through, especially when given visual and audio add ons which, while perhaps building up the storytelling experience in terms of consumer interaction and multiple levels of engagement, are fundamentally distracting from the active process of reading, and engaging a young reader's imagination.

In terms of an adult audience, while I can only speak for myself, there is no way in hell I want my book to be anything other than a book. I want my ebooks to be a strict adaptation of a print text to digital (and I only read ebooks if I am doing a lot of travelling - I much prefer physical books, but that is a whole other discussion). But, fundamentally, I do not want my books to do anything other than be. I do not want nor require supplementary material to engage me and to encourage me to buy the product. In fact, there is a good chance that I would find such content off-putting. One of my lecturers brought up the question of whether or not we would buy ebooks with ads - as one company has proposed doing - so the cost of the ebook would be reduced, but the reader would have to contend with ads while reading, to which I responded no, full stop. I do not want my reading experience disrupted by outside content. EVER. I don’t like my reading experience being interrupted by other real life humans, much less digital additions.

While this is all of course just my opinion, the fact remains that I just don’t really see a viable future for interactive media in book publishing. There might be some great innovation out there that may change my outlook, but as far as I am concerned, I just want my books to book so that readers can read.