If Bradley Inman is right, books will no longer be just printed words, but will involve videos supplementing the storyline, characters "tweeting" away their thoughts online and readers collaborating and revising the original story.
Inman is the man behind the "Vook," an e-book platform that wraps text, video, and social networking together into one package.
While the first Vook will be released on June 1, the company has not released any details about the name or features of the "interactive experience."
"We don't know what people will do, because there's never been something like this," said Inman.
The plan is for each chapter to have a video that extends the story, shot in mockumentary form at locations described in the book.
As part of the social-networking aspect of a Vook, certain fictional characters in the book will tweet their thoughts online and readers can follow and respond.
Inman also indicated that readers will be encouraged to collaborate Wikipedia-style to make their own edits to the story, with the potential for user revisions to be included in future editions.
"The challenge is to avoid making a circus out of all the multimedia while still giving readers a lot of options," Inman said.
"This is kind of like news before the Internet," he said. "You would pick up a newspaper from a rack, and that was it. Now you can go online, search for a story, comment on it, e-mail it to a friend, etc."
Inman also drew some comparisons of his product to video games, pointing out that the printed book is much like an old Scrabble board, with games today being aurally and visually interactive.
"The video game industry is the perfect role model for what books need to become," he said. "They are light years ahead of us."
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