I don't want a time-sensitive smart-novel. I don't want to have the reading experience change each time I re-read the book. I don't want writers having to write extra content to fit into my (and everyone else's) particular reading patterns. I certainly don't want an ebook format that not only requires special technology to read, but to process … technology with even less guarantee to survive another few decades than PDF readers.
Yeah, pretty much a non-starter as far as I'm concerned.
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TREEbook, a New Time-Triggered E-book Format | The Passive Voice
From Publishers Weekly: In a phone interview, Medallion president Adam Mock said the name of the new e-book format,TREEbook, stands for Timed Reading Experience E-Book, and said the technology goes fa…
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Remember the movie Big? I think this was one of his ideas for the toy company, a comic book with a new story every time.
Yeah, I can imagine it in a comic book setting (though pretty kid-oriented), but not beyond that.
“If you stop reading or forget to pick up the book, the book knows and will continue on and you might miss something. TREEbooks can include all kinds of easter eggs and side stories, its all up to the creativity of the author to come up with new playful options.”
This creeps me out, they want e-readers to be like iphones where you just stare at it all day so you don't miss anything. Next they'll squeak in some advertising and just like that, reading is no longer fun and relaxing.
The comments to the post were very telling. "Dammit, I read to relax, not to make sure that I don't miss something important." Ugh.
I'm not quite so dismissive out of hand. True, I can't think of a good example of where it might add to the enjoyment factor, but we're thinking of it in terms of today's static books. With creativity, it might be another form of narrative — just not analogous to today's book reading experience, nor like a movie. Probably more similar to a MMORG to anything else we have today, though different from that in that the author would be the only one to have "played" the other roles.
Just read those comments, not a single positive response.
Hence the thought of it being a brilliant idea, at least on first pass. One problem comes with having creative talent to come up with multiple paths and still provide as long and rich a path as an old-fashioned narrative. "Create Your Own Adventure" works, but only with a much shorter story at the end. I'd rather read (or write) multiple different tales than one such long one.
To be honest, though, I'm more concerned about it being so technology-bound.
I can see something like this working when we have much, much better and creative AI.
Which, +Travis Cobb, was surprising (usually someone has something positive to say about anything).