Ebooks are so 2010…welcome to “enhanced” ebooks

I meant for this post to go out this past Tuesday, and I hit the ‘publish’ button, I swear I did! I think WordPress screwed me. Oh crap, will they screw me again ’cause I said they screwed me? Oh crap! Nevertheless, here it is for Thirsty Thursday, so lets call it ‘Tools for Thursday.’

In this Tools for Tuesday edition, lets talk enhancements. In the battle for our dollars, publishers are now trying their best to marry technology with existing ebook material to give us…wait for it… ENHANCED EBOOKS!!! These offspring of a writer’s mind and a technology expert’s talent would allow readers to be able to view things like Mickey Mantle’s swing in slow motion when they read The Last Boy or hear some of Jay-Z’s music when they crack open, oops, when they slide through the pages of his ebook Decoded.

Decoded with the audio and video sells for $14.99 on Amazon. The Last Boy is $16.99. The price range for “normal” ebooks, including self-pubbed ebooks, is around $5.99. The question is, would people pay almost twice the price for 30 minutes of author commentary, a few video trailers and some research slides? Would you?

And if you’re a writer and you go the self-pub route, would you go to the extra time and expense of putting together the bonus material to make your book an “enhanced ebook?” Certainly, these are all questions that are answered with individual preference and pocketbooks in mind. However, I don’t think we can avoid the fact that as ebooks move from infancy to adolescence, they, like our own adolescents, will merge themselves more with the audio/visual world.   

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Mark Fadden is a freelance writer and author whose latest, award-winning suspense thriller, The Brink, is now available as an eBook for Amazon.com Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook for only $2.99!

“The Brink is a hell of a read.” – Bestselling author Sandra Brown

“Mark Fadden is a masterful storyteller.” – Writer’s Digest

“Mark Fadden is the next Dan Brown.” – Triple C Ranch Book Club, Southlake, Texas

Check out The Brink and Mark’s other books at http://www.markfadden.com