It's Time to Modernize eBooks

By: Shel Israel

We expect Age of Context, the new book Robert Scoble and 

I announced will sell more ebooks than paper. In the book, 

we will discuss how people are about to journey where no 

one has gone and we want to do the same with ebooks.

To date, most ebooks are simply electronic versions of documents designed to 

be printed. This is not a surprise. When TV first came in, the first newscasters

migrated over from radio. They simply sat at a desk, reading printed words

off the page in front of a camera, just like they had always done.

But look what evolved. TV news, may not always be the quality we would like 

to see, but they have adapted to a visual medium one entirely different than 

the radio medium from which newscasters emerged.

We feel that it is time for electronic books to become more than the paper and 

PDFs from which they have emerged. Here are some of the features we would

like to see in Age of Context ebooks:

Hot Links

to the online sources of the information we are using.

Color photos

that can be expanded on touch e-readers

Video clips

Many of our interviews will be conducted by 

Scoble on-camera.

Subscription-based updates

We are writing on a very dynamic subject. We would like to make periodic 

updates in the book. We would like to charge a small sum for the new updates

–under $1 and let people who bought our book keep current on changes. This

would replace annuity books such as What Color is Your Parachute, which 

has been updated annually for more than 25 years.

Reader comments

Why can’t readers comment on our chapters in the same way they 

comment on our blogs?

Some of these features have been tried here and there. We are impressed, 

for example, with History of Jazz (video-alert) an interactive iBook. Some have never 

been done. 

We know not all ereaders are capable of all these innovations. But we see no 

reason why our software cannot drive innovation in hardware.

We think it is time to improve the reader’s online experience and we hope to

 make some–if not all– of these ideas come true.