Last weekend, the Vook office was robbed. What a sinking feeling to walk into work and discover that we were hit by some thugs. This was particularly worrisome because the entire team was locked down engineering the Vookmaker platform with a November 1 delivery deadline looming. There is another side to this lousy story. One, we did not lose anything that valuable beyond equipment that could be replaced. Two, we were up and running Monday morning without a slip in Read more…
The Kindle Fire and the newer, cheaper Kindles mean an additional retail outlet. A round-up of Amazon’s new prices: Kindle Fire (tablet) $199 Kindle $79 Kindle Touch $99 Kindle Touch 3G $149 Kindle Keyboard $99 Kindle Keyboard 3G $139 Amazon is already experiencing pre-orders for the Kindle Fire, and we’ll also see regular Kindle sales jump. When the iPad launched, Vook sales tripled the next day and have only increased since then. When the iPad 2 launched, we also saw a significant Read more…
Our digital publishing platform, VookMaker, is ever closer to public release — and our vision of an easy-to-use ebook creation, distribution and sales reporting platform. And yes! This is exciting, this platform we have developed. And yes! We are excited. But — a platform is only as good as what people make with it — which is why we’re even more excited that Apple recognizes the high quality, awesome looking eBooks VookMaker can produce. How do we know this? Because Read more…
A recent NYT story on news organizations publishing digital books read almost like a historical review of the inevitable than a piece on innovation—at least at Vook HQ. As soon as pro-sumer video cameras and desktop editing made it possible to easily create and place video on Webpages, news organizations quickly adapted the technology. Digital publishing is going to become just as prevalent. It makes sense: News organizations feature the best writing by the best writers who are constantly turning Read more…
A post at TechCrunch by Eric Ries this morning caught my attention — it speaks to a core issue we’re wrestling with as we engineer new features and functionality into our digital book creation platform, VookMaker. Ries asks the question, “How do you know you’re building the right product — if you’re not talking to your customers?” Of course, he asks a lot of other things — but I’m going to focus narrowly on the bit relevant to us, so Read more…
You might have noticed that our Website changed over the weekend. Instead of a storefront landing page, you’re treated to a brief statement that distills our mission. We strive to make Vook “the easiest way to create, enhance and distribute digital books.” When we launched with Simon & Schuster in September of 2024, we released some of the first enhanced eBooks in the world. Over the past two years, we’ve published more than 600 titles, seen more than a million Read more…
