HarperCollins launches digital-native first
HarperCollins has launched its first Australian-authored digital-native enhanced ebook—a title conceived as a digital product and created using Apple’s free iBooks Author software—which is unlikely ever to appear in printed form.
Cranium Universe showcases the work of poet, writer, musician and artist Reg Mombassa through a combination of text, audio narration and visual footage. It was created as a collaboration between Mombassa and HarperCollins designer Matt Stanton.
‘You can enjoy Cranium Universe on so many levels and choose how you want to engage with it,’ says HarperCollins publisher Fiona Henderson. ‘On the most basic level you can read Reg’s poems and song lyrics and enjoy his fabulous artwork and graffiti peppered throughout, or you can take up Reg’s invitation to hear or watch the songs performed in fifteen audiovisual clips, discover the stories behind his work, linger in three interactive galleries of his sublime images, and hear Reg talk about art.’ Another feature allows readers to watch Mombassa create his artworks while listening to his commentary.
Henderson told Bookseller+Publisher the idea for a digital product was flagged early on in the book’s acquisition process before iBooks Author was even available. ‘We had already created a wonderful illustrated biography as a p-book several years ago, The Life and Times of Reg Mombassa. But Reg wanted to do a new smaller book of his poems and lyrics, illustrated with his artwork. When we discussed this at our regular acquisitions meeting, our publishing director Shona Martyn suggested this would be the perfect project for a direct-to-digital book.
‘When we first discussed the idea with Reg and his agent, Lyn Tranter of ALM, the technology we ended up using hadn’t been developed. We were envisaging having to send it overseas to add in the music and audiovisual elements, and this would have meant a lengthy to-and-fro and, realistically, a lot less control over the creative process day to day. Luckily for us, Apple developed the iBooks Author program in the interim and we were able to do the project inhouse with Reg.’
As well as learning to use the new program, Stanton and the publishing team also had to adopt a new mindset. ‘Our biggest challenge was learning to not be confined by all the other usual conventions of the printed book,’ says Henderson. ‘At first it was difficult for all of us not to approach it in the same way we did a p-book so we had to learn to let go of that and go wild, and Reg of course adapted to that as only a creative genius can,’ says Henderson, who adds that Mombassa ‘doesn’t even have an ipad’.
Henderson describes the creative process as freeing, not to be ‘confined to plain text on one page, image on the next, and the limitations of conventional layout’. ‘My main concern was making sure we had something visual and colourful on every page. And on practical level we suddenly didn’t have to worry about a gutter breaking up a superb painting or needing page numbers or colour proofs, we could make major changes up until a few days before release—and we didn’t have to wait three months to see our labour of love arrive back from the offshore printer.’
The book, priced at $11.99, is now available on Apple’s iBookstore. The catch with the iBooks Author program is that titles created using the program cannot be sold through any other retailers, though Henderson says that HarperCollins is ‘investigating broadening this out to other retailers in a form that suits other devices and platforms, without losing any of the multimedia features’.
Henderson says HarperCollins has been ‘thrilled with the response from the media and the sales results to date’, and hopes to publish more books of this kind in the future. ‘Now that we’ve had this glorious glimpse of the future, we want more. And we all loved the creative freedom and possibilities it opens up.’
Tags: appleebooksHarperCollins
Category: Features
