Penguin Offers a Glimpse of The Future of Ebooks

Earlier this week Penguin presented their vision for how they could translate their book into the ebook format. Or rather, how they can really make us of digital publishing to create much better books.

Here is the video:

It's really fascinating stuff. Great ideas and great innovation.

Some people are of course, questioning if this is really a book or just some fancy doohickey. But, people who asked that question need to rethink how they see the world. You are not selling books; you are selling stories.

You don't define your product by the packaging it's in. It's the other way around. You define the packaging to best match the story.

There is perhaps an even bigger issue here. Because books like these cannot be produced in the epub format (the format that Apple will use on the iPad, and the format used on the B&N Nook - and possible future Kindle versions).

The Apple iBook store just got out-of-date before it was even launched.

As Penguin's CEO, John Makinson said: "For the time being at least we'll be creating a lot of our digital content as applications for sales in app stores in HTML, rather than as ebooks. The definition of a book itself, as you can see, is up for grabs."

And this a problem. Because you when buy a story, you don't go into an "app store." You go into a "story store."

Also: Watch John Makinson's talk about the future of ebooks pricing, and the role of the publisher.

(via paidContent)