Two bright spots in book publishing: Junger's WAR - and the Three Little Pigs

It's hard to find good news in the book publishing industry these days. Indie booksellers are struggling (see Powell's), retail chains are declining (see Borders and Barnes & Noble), and there's a general sense that younger readers are increasingly distracted by digital devices like iPhones and iPads.

Despite the gloominess, I'd like to point out two bright spots of innovation in book publishing: books that use the new technology of mobile devices to create a wholly new type of reading experience. In both cases, a mobile device like the iPad is not a distraction but the very reason why the book can exist in this form.

• WAR and Restrepo, by Sebastian Junger: This 2010 book and documentary by the noted bestselling author of The Perfect Storm took Junger and cameraman Tim Hetherington to Afghanistan to live with a platoon of American soldiers as they fought in one of the deadliest areas of the entire war - the Korengal Valley. The book and documentary are both outstanding, covering the conflict itself and the wider themes of trust, fear, and commitment among soldiers. It's unusually good writing and filmmaking - highly recommended for anyone interested in the war in Afghanistan.

Junger's project is also unusual in that it generated both a printed book - WAR (in print & ebook at Amazon) - and the documentary Restrepo (trailer on YouTube, full-length on Netflix and iTunes). And Restrepo is up for an Academy Award for Best Documentary this month.

But there was one other output of the project: an enhanced ebook, called WAR (Enhanced Edition), available at the iBookstore (search for it from the app on the iPad on iPhone). This is the best of all three media: the full text of the book, with video clips - some, but not all, from the documentary - integrated inside the text.

This design offers an entirely new reading experience: when the text describes one of the soldiers, you can often watch a video clip of that soldier speaking. Occasionally Junger describes a firefight, or a specific moment within it, that is then accompanied by a video of that moment. (Click the image at left for an sample screenshot.)

Especially for a nonfiction book, in which the text is trying to communicate specific occurrences and facts, the enhanced ebook format offers something better than we've ever had - or could have had - before the advent of the iPad and similar devices.

The other bright spot I've found in book publishing is a new kind of popup book.

• Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Popup Book is full of surprises (available on the iTunes store - looks best on iPad but also works on iPhone).

  Telling the familiar story of the porcine trio, this virtual popup book lets you push, pull, and rotate elements just as you would in a physical book. The twist is the x-ray button, which shows the mechanical workings inside each page. Art direction, music, and mechanical engineering come together to create a uniquely good experience. (Click the screenshots at left to see a page from the popup book - and then the x-ray version.)

The downside of these experiences is, of course, they're harder and costlier to create. Not every nonfiction author is going to have the resources to fly out to whatever area of the world they're writing about and capture video footage for use in an ebook. And not every children's book author will be able to assemble programmers, animators, and composers just to create the iPad version of their story.

But the examples above are worth studying. Increasingly, in order to compete in the digital media environment, authors and publishers will have to find some way to use emerging platforms to their advantage.

• Feb 15, 2011
• IN: Customer Experience
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