Digital reading devices have many allies in different forms.  There are many who are eager to create products and services tailored to such devices. The numbers of digital reading devices are growing rapidly. The idea that people might love to read a book on a digital screen has gained popularity and friends. This year we have seen several digital reading devices from different companies such as kindle 2 from Amazon, devices from Samsung and Fujitsu, and reading devices in the form of mobile phones like iPhone from Apple, which enthralled bookworms. 

Bradley Inman, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has developed “Vook,” (vook.tv), a digital amalgam of fiction, twitter stream and online video. This is one kind of multimedia hybrid that will utilize the growing opportunity with the digital readers.

Publishing is also feeling the same problems of the recession and there are restructuring and other changes happening in the industry. The digital media is changing the nature of news, music and video and the popularity of e-books is changing the idea of experience that books might one day deliver.

Last year, to tap the opportunities that e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle can create, Mr. Inman wrote a thriller, “The Right Way to Do Wrong” and used TurnHere (his own site that creates videos for publishers) to create 2 dozen short videos with actors for the book’s main mystery. Now he is showing his Vook prototype to publishers to attract publishers and their established writers.

Vook is a new idea that will try to address few issues with the ebooks and digital readers. In ebooks and in digital formats, reader often miss their transportive appeal, fonts, images on the jacket cover and in the pages and the feel of quality paper which are being replaced by humdrum pixels on a digital page. Using devices like iPhone also threatens the reading, by making video games available just a click away on the iPhone.

Putting videos in ebooks will be intriguing and it gets mixed so naturally into the story that readers don’t realize about the changing medium.

There are some more such efforts are going on-

WEBook, a start-up in New York, lets collaboration of people on writing books. It is also expected to bring in new ways to allow real-time feedback by readers on writers’ work.

Wattpad is a start-up that helps unpublished authors, gives them a route around the big book companies and distributes the writing on the Internet and on mobile phones. However, it does not pay the authors right now.

Last week, Fourth Story Media, publisher of the “Harry Potter” franchise, started testing a site called as “the Amanda Project,” with a limited number of people. The site hosts content and themes from Fourth Story’s series of teenage books, which will be published by HarperCollins. This site will start allowing readers to create their own characters, and upload artwork.

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