Enhanced Ebook Research

An article by Chris    No Comments

Image by Andrew Mason

Today I’ve been searching more into the format of digital textbooks, finding examples of existing projects and what they have to offer. After way too much googling than I care to admit, I finally came across the term “Enhanced Ebook”.

Not owning a Kindle or iPad I had no idea what this term meant but after a bit more googling I’ve found out that currently enhanced ebooks are basically a normal ebook but with some added extras bolted on the top, sort of like the 2nd DVD in a special edition. Not many people watch them but it allows publishers to charge more than the normal price for essentially gimmicks because people think they are getting extra value for their money.

It’s certainly been an interesting couple of hours researching the topic, I’ve seen people arguing for the last year that the enhancements made to the ebooks are worthless and don’t add much value and finally being declared dead in April of this year. Yet I’m finding that more and more of these enhanced editions of ebooks are being published, Rob Brydon’s Small Man in a Book (Enhanced Edition) for example was published on the itunes store just 2 weeks ago. Interestingly enough though, the enhanced version and the none enhanced version are £6.99 when the hardcover is £5. I’m not quite sure how Penguin can justify this to their customers, I know I wouldn’t pay more for a digital version of a book when I can get a physical copy cheaper.

What constitutes an Enhancement?

Publishers don’t really seem to know right now, it seems that they are falling over themselves to actually find some extra content to strap on to their ebooks to justify charging more for them. DigitalBookWorlds presentation on “Ebooks vs. Apps: Pros, Cons and Possibilities” mentions on slide 11 a list of 7 examples on ebook enhancements

• Collapsible table of contents
• Hidden searchable text
• Internal Linking
• External Linking
• Audio
• Video
• Interactivity

It seems a lot of these items are fillers to bulk out the list, especially collapsible table of contents and internal linking, I think these are more common sense for an ebook rather than enhancements. External linking though I do quite like the sound of, especially for a textbook. A textbook can provide as much information that can be expected of students at a certain level and they could then be provided links to external resources should they want to venture further into the subject.

Final Thoughts

Enhanced Ebooks are just getting started, and people are trying to declare it dead before its even had a chance to take off. Once the tools are in place to create the frameworks for enhanced ebooks they can become even more viable and they will become a lot more attractive to customers when the publishers open their eyes and drop the prices.