The digi-novel: the new way to read in the 21st century?

August 29, 4:19 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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         Reading, retro-style 

With book sales nationwide languishing under a petrificus totalus curse since last summer's final Harry Potter installment and e-books and Amazon's groundbreaking Kindle failing to ignite more than a weak blaze of interest, Dutton, an imprint of Penguin books, thinks they've got the answer--the digi-novel.

Dutton has signed up with Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the C.S.I. television juggernaut, for exclusive worldwide rights to Zuiker's new three book multimedia series set for release in fall 2009. Dutton has dubbed the series the world's first digi-novels because readers will need to read the book, view clips, and participate online in order to complete the story.

The series will have a mystery-type flair and will focus on renegade government investigator Steve Dark. Special codes will be included at the end of each chapter in the book; the reader uses these codes to unlock film footage online that continues the storyline in the book. Readers will also be able to participate in a community portal that features alternative storylines, different characters, and, according to Dutton, "countless ancillary levels of story enrichment." In other words, they promise that it will be very cool.

Does the digi-novel spell doom to the good, old-fashioned book? Dutton is banking (literally; they reportedly shelled out millions for the publishing rights) on digi-novels attracting technologically savvy young people. Certainly it will; however, several other high-tech innovations in the book world have been greeted with the same mixture of fear and interest and simply have failed to uproot  the traditional book.

When e-books were first introduced, book lovers (and booksellers) wept, wailed and gnashed their teeth. But despite all the hype and the dire predictions that print books would soon be obsolete, e-books still only account for less than 1% of the books sold. The same is true of digital reading devices like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader; they are hip and unavoidably convenient when travelling, but readers overwhelmingly prefer actual books to electronic ink. There is an aesthetic appeal in books--their smell, their feel, the warm fuzzy feeling they give when you sit in an armchair and open a new tome for the first time--that nothing else can replace. No, the book isn't dead yet; it's simply moving over a bit on the shelf to make room for a new addition to the literary family.