The E-book Opportunity
Stack believes e-book publishing will bifurcate into two distinct categories: a text-based ePub market based within the e-ink devices, with an "occasional embedded image or video," and an "mBook" market, featuring true multimedia titles as emerging via iPad and Android apps.
The discussion is especially important when considering the children's book market, says Stack. "Children's books ... need a tight integration of images, animation, video, audio, text and interaction," he says. "To paraphrase ["If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" author] Laura Numeroff ... if you give a child an iPad, you will be left with no doubt where the children's book market is headed. Their fingers fly across the screen, and their joy and engagement with the story is remarkable."