Twelve months ago today, we launched four Vooks in partnership with Simon & Schuster. At the time, the idea of video combined with books seemed innovative but perhaps a tad crazy — even to our supporters. But just one year later, we’ve seen an explosion in enhanced books and mixed media (kudos to the Apple iPad). At Vook, all we can say is, “Wow!”  It’s been an exciting ride since that memorable date with great publishing partners, authors, agents, engineers, filmmakers, investors and so many supportive readers and users. With 100 Vooks published including 1,000 videos, more than 175,000 Vooks have been downloaded.

What we have learned:

1. How to make better Vooks. The secret sauce includes great authors, well-written text, and smartly integrated and relevant videos. Almost all of our new Vooks earn out in about two months and begin making everyone money very quickly.
2. How to  produce Vooks faster. Our first four Vooks took four months to create. In September, we created 30 new Vooks. Goodbye to the 18-month book publishing cycle.
3. Vooks have a long digital shelf life. One of the first Vooks that we created was “The 90 Second Fitness Solution” by Pete Cerqua, which continues to sell well every day. In just the last four months alone, Pete’s Vook has sold almost 1,500 copies.
4. The hottest categories. We love Business Inspiration, such as our vooks from Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Tom Peters and Steven Covey; Health, Fitness & Sports  is very popular with our new Pilates vooks with Alycea Ungaro and The 8-Step Golf Swing with Jim McLean ; Spirituality is hot with titles from Deepak Chopra and a series on Jesus Christ; and Entertainment is rocking with our Guns N’ Roses Vook. (That Vook was not as hot as Slash, but it burned up the charts for us!)
5. How to deliver what our readers want. They love our video, they want short-form text and they love to share.

What we are still striving to figure out:

1. Rights roadblocks. It represents a deterrent to innovation. We would rather hire more engineers, filmmakers and authors and hire fewer lawyers. But the legal landmines are holding back progress for all digital publishers. We have found collaboration works much better than confrontation.
2. The standards spaghetti. We have had great success with the Apple platform. But the new readers, devices and platforms have a myriad of different standards and make it difficult for all of us to get our creations in the hands of more consumers.
3. Meeting the needs of creators. We are paving new ground with creators of all kinds and they crave new digital platforms. The demand is overwhelming and we are working night and day to serve them, but it is a little daunting at times, even with our smart, agile and tenacious team.

In the end, this is so much fun that we can hardly contain ourselves — it’s the kind of experience you’d want to make a Vook about. As our founder Brad Inman likes to say, “We are like Lewis and Clark, stuck somewhere in Missouri, trying to figure out whether to carve a path this way or that. But we will get there!”

This weekend, the New York Times suggested that “E-Books Make Readers Less Isolated.” The article asserts that someone carrying a new e-reading device or tablet is inviting conversation and interaction.

“Strangers constantly ask about it,” Michael Hughes, a communications associate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said of his iPad, which he uses to read a mix of novels and nonfiction. “It’s almost like having a new baby.” An iPad owner for four months, Mr. Hughes said people were much more likely to approach him now than when he toted a book. “People approach me and ask to see it, to touch it, how much I like it,” he said. “That rarely happens with dead-tree books.”

But the social aspect of e-books isn’t limited to curiosity about devices. People who are reading on tablets are often connecting to internet and sharing content or conversations while reading. Of course, the ability to connect has been a core value at Vook from the beginning.

One of our earliest Vooks, Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, drew in readers with relevant hyperlinks and access to Gary’s Twitter stream.  Less than a year later, you can email your friends videos and highlighted passages from within a Vook you’re reading on your iPhone or iPad. The ability to interact with authors and co-readers always seemed like an obvious next step in innovative publishing, but it turns out that it’s also essential to the sharing of ideas, on and offline.

The benefits of connectivity don’t end inside the binding of an e-book.  Dialogue online creates a welcoming environment for dialogue in person. The Times says:

Suddenly, the lone, unapproachable reader at the corner table seems less alone. Given that some e-readers can display books while connecting online, there’s a chance the erstwhile bookworm is already plugged into a conversation somewhere, said Paul Levinson, professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University.

Are e-Books bringing us closer together? Tell us what you think in the comments below, or tweet us @vooktv.

In Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart envisions a not-so-distant dystopic future in which books are artifacts, “Assertiveness” is a college major and immortality is for sale. The book’s protagonist, Lenny, still reads, writes in a journal and thus is essentially a dinosaur. But when the financial crisis hits New York, it’s up to old-fashioned Lenny to save the world with language–and love for a young woman named Eunice.

The book has been compared to George Orwell’s 1984 for its sharp cultural criticism. And while Shteyngart’s satirical prose comes down hard on the damage computers have done to humanity, the author still has his own iPhone app. Download it and you’ll get excerpts from his writing, bonus content, integration of Facebook and Twitter, video clips and breaking news about the author.

In context it seems ironic, but it might simply be a sign of the times. Ultimately, apps don’t signify the death of reading–rather, tablets and e-readers are encouraging more people to buy books.

And often, apps enable readers to engage more fully with the content they’re consuming. Novelist John Reed created a companion iPhone app that lets readers contribute and converse about his new book, Tales of Woe. Tales of Woe compiles true stories of tragedy and misery, and with the iPhone app, readers can contribute their own unhappy stories.

More and more, apps are a tool that accompany books and represent authors in the mobile sphere. For examples, Karen Armstrong’s decision to create a Vook, A Compassionate Life in 12 Steps, caught the attention of Knopf. Soon, the book version of Armstrong’s Vook will be released. It’s proof that when the publishing industry embraces technology, an infinite stream of possibilities can unfold.