Video Comes to Books

Simon and Schuster, one of the publishing heavy hitters today announced a deal with Vook, a start up who has the idea of creating a new kind of digital book, one that combines video and text in one place.

This all makes sense.  Kindle, and other digital books like Kindle are in fact screens. And screens can carry video, as well as text.

When the Mac Tablet comes out soon (a giant iPhone) it will certainly be capable of carrying text as well as video.

And who says that books have to be text?  

Maybe a book can be video as well as text. Maybe a kind of tapestry of both.

That certainly seems to be where Vook and Simon and Schuster are headed. A whole new grammar and a whole new kind of storytelling.

We met with the founder of Vook a few months ago and he showed us the product at that time. Interesting, but a bit predictable. Links to video from text.  We think it's a good start, but we'd rather see something a bit purer. Something that seamlessly passed from text to video and back again.  A bit like LIFE magazine and stills.  A tapestry of media.

There's an enormous opportunity here for a good idea.