Our children’s titles have always been a hit with young readers, but now we’ve upped the ante and produced a Vook that will wow the entire family. We produced it with the company Kindermusik and it’s called “America The Musical 1776-1899: A Nation’s History Through Music” and, as it promises on the cover, it relates our country’s history as a rich, fun, interactive, video and song packed extravaganza. We’re going to be producing more explosively colorful experiences like “America The Read more…
A recent blog post on authors and the gaming space swiped at Vook in its headline — which got our attention, mostly because we’ve been thinking about the same thing. We’d like to think the post’s author isn’t aware of the extent of what we’re building, but in the fast paced world of digital publishing, those who take time to get defensive are dead. What engages us — and probably the post’s author — is the increasingly pressing question of Read more…
Looking for a Lawyer Who Loves to Make Deals and Loves Books Director of Content Acquisition Are you an attorney who loves publishing, innovation and technology? Then we have a job for you. Vook is seeking to hire a lawyer to join our team as a Director of Content Acquisitions to acquire video, text and photo content from publishers, authors, studios and agents. This person is expected to be well connected in the publishing and media worlds and capable of Read more…
Publishing iPad apps is a great excuse to indulge your geeky heart in the name of market research—the Games category in iPad is the competitive landscape, right? So I had to pick up id’s Rage HD the day it came out. If an on-rails shooter about blasting mutants can take the #1 overall spot in iPad apps, what does it say about the business, the marketplace and the consumer? After playing Rage, I’m guessing it means we iPad consumers have Read more…
Our JFK Vook has been #1 in the Top Paid Book Apps for iPad — and today it climbed to #1 in the Top Grossing Book Apps chart as well. It’s the kind of powerhouse we knew we’d release—but we’re still a little surprised to find we’ve done it. It’s a great app—a testament to the hard work of the people at Perseus and NBC — and a great value: it’s only $6.99 and it’s got reems of footage of Read more…
Technology, like water and fire, moves in any direction it wants and often with no conscience. I was recently in Seattle and was overwhelmed by the scale of the six-year old downtown public library. In 1998, Seattle voters approved the largest library bond issue in US history. The $196 million “Libraries for All” bond measure resulted in an 11-floor, 362,987-square-foot avant-garde Rem Koolhaas-designed extravaganza. When the library was conceived in 1996, the power of the Internet was just becoming apparent and Read more…
Vook was honored to have Matt Thurmond—a member of the TechMedia group at Harvard Business School—invite us to appear on a panel at their Cyberposium event this past Saturday at HBS. We joined Rick Richter, CEO of Ruckus Media Group, and Allison Dobson, Director, Digital Publishing, of Random House. Professor Rajiv Lal moderated our panel—and, crucially, figured out how to get the iPad projector working. In the face of top-notch MBAs, we came prepared with figures on ebook publishing, the Read more…
