E-Publishing: The Future?

I stumbled on this by accident, but I really believe this is where the future of e-publishing lies. 

http://us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/features/ts-spivet/index.html

To break it down, Reif Larsen, author of The Selective Works of T.S Spivet, created a book about a 12 year old cartographer featuring illustrations, creative footnotes, and little diagrams to bolster selected sections of the narrative.  In truth, it's akin to House of leaves in its complexity and twice as pretty.

Larsen worked with Jeff Rabb in creating a app of this book for the iPad.  The result is in the above link (check out the videos, especially the Demonstrating Spivet video). 

For me, I got very excited watching this.  You know when you see something and then the cogs go full steam and your brain is flooded with ideas, well, that's how it got me.  At the moment, e-publishing is just about getting the words into a format that can be downloaded to e-readers.  If you're lucky, you get an illustrated cover, which, if you're reading it through Kindle, looks really poor.  I know interactive books have been around for a while on the iPad.  I remember seeing a Winnie the Poo story and Alice in Wonderland version which was very interactive, but Larsen is taking it a little further by bringing in social media. 

For me, this would be perfect for Dog Mile; old photographs, maps of the town, illustrations, the shifting landscape, diary entries, etc, they could all be interactive. 

Too, with the iPad, you have a vehicle there which can play audio and video, so how cool would it be to select a passage in a book and hear an author's commentary about how they wrote that section, the inspiration behind it, whatever?  This is already happening with Blu Ray, whereby we can gain access to more than just the film.  I'm sure it's already underway, as Larsen has already shown, but the possibilities are endless.  Yes, there's more work involved, but as a writer/reader, to get to see more, hear more, and know more about the book would be perfect.  Kindle will get there in terms of colour and touch screen, so it won't be limited, soon, to just iPads.   

Too, check out this website: http://tsspivet.com/ too cool. 

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