I was recently in an Apple store. The store beckoned me, not only with its huge Apple logo, but with the number of people, including children milling about the iPad display counter. It was hard to get near it. The children definitely outnumbered adults and it was fascinating to watch how they handled the device.
I became entranced, watching a little girl about the age of 4 or 5 playing through all the applications on the iPad. She played games; she went to the bookshelf and opened up Winnie-the-Pooh. Whether she had prior knowledge of how to work the pages, or just knew intuitively, she flipped her finger in the upper corner, swishing it across the face of the iPad to get to the next page. Bored with that, it was back to an app where her fingers once more flickered on the iPad causing all sorts of interactive things to happen. It captured her attention for a few moments, until next she decided to try the car racing game again.
As an aside, I was in a fiction writer’s workshop recently with romance author, Alicia Rasley. The last thing she commented on before letting us go for the day was that the publishing and book industry is good for about another 10 years in the formats it’s in now. The publishing industry sits now where recording artists were about 10 years ago. If we look at how their recording media has changed, and the way their product reaches their audience now compared to 10 years ago, it’s quite a difference.
What changes will the publishing and book industry see in ten years time? It was only in the 1950’s that the paperback was introduced. Now in 2010 we are reading via e-book. We are reading on devices, the paper is gone. Libraries are disappearing in favour of virtual storage. In some states, children are given laptops which contain their learning resources and books for the year.
As authors, and publishers we need to think about that 5 year old little girl playing with the iPad and how she wants to learn. Within this digital age, she is the change that we need to incorporate into our books. She was bored with just flipping a page. Just may be in 10 years, Winnie-the-Pooh will be a holographic bear that jumps off the page and reads the story to her, allowing her to press links to learn more about Christopher Robin and A.A. Milne.
While at the Apple store, I managed to wiggle my way to the counter and picked up an iPad. I looked up my digital book, Little Blue Penguin, in the iBookstore, and left it on the screen for all to see. There was my app! I am one step closer to entertaining this little girl in the digital world.
Nothing would do but to bring home an iPad that day. After all – I justified that it can be a marketing tool. Now, not only can I sell my hardcover book at an author’s signing, but I can also show Little Blue Penguin as a digital book application. Now isn’t that futuristic thinking?
Tags: digital media
