<p>There was an interesting article on Booksquare lately that touched upon the coming phenomenon of 'advanced ebooks' [<a href="http://booksquare.com/what-are-enhanced-ebooks/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+booksquare+%28Booksquare%29"><cite>What Are Enhanced Ebooks? | Booksquare</cite></a>] As far as I can gather enhanced ebooks -- eebooks -- are supposed to be the Next Great Thing. We can expect to see them on Apple's new tablet or whatever it's called (that story is boring me already). They will take books to a new level -- with pictures and videos and all that extra stuff readers everywhere haven't been crying out for. A bit like the book equivalent of the Director's Cut DVD box set or something.</p>
<p>Do I sound sceptical? You bet.</p>
<!--more--><p>Booksquare go into this subject in detail -- and I highly recommend you read the piece because it contains some very salient questions.</p>
<p>Before becoming an author, though, I spent a decade covering technology for the <i>Sunday Times</i>. And this whole thing has, I must say, the rank whiff of hype about it. Remember interactive CD-ROMs? These were supposed to be the new ebook too. People like Dorling Kindersley among many others ploughed a stack of money into mainly non-fiction or educational titles you could lick and listen to and do all sorts of magic stuff with. Where are they now? Is there even an interactive DVD market any more? Even the most sensible use for the medium -- encyclopaedias -- seems to have been largely destroyed by the web. Microsoft don't produce Encarta any more. Britannica looks a bit weedy. Why? Because we all go to somewhere like Wikipedia instead. Oh, and in case you didn't notice, Wikipedia has no clicky, shouty, interactive things. It's pretty much just text and pictures.</p>
<p>Here's another misgiving. Where's the money going to come from? Sure -- I can do author interviews and provide research photos and the rest for an enhanced ebook edition. But there's still a production cost in there. I know the public equates everything digital with the word 'free'. But it isn't. Trust me. The on-cost of adding multimedia to a plain ebook may be substantial. Will people really pay more to get that special edition? Or will they simply expect all those extras for free? My guess is the latter.</p>
<p>And one final doubt. Surely all that's going to happen is that publishers will place their bets on the favourites. They won't bother with eebooks for everyone, just the bestsellers because that's where the money is. So the book world will divide on lines of class and marketing even more than it does today -- which is a lot actually.</p>
<p>Though I could be completely wrong on all of this, of course.</p>