I mentioned Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a couple of years ago as a great argument for the usefulness of the public domain. Over on eBookNewser, Nate Hoffelder noticed that the e-book now has an interactive iPhone/iPad app available for $4.99 in the app store.
While I’m a bit “iffy” on the utility of stand-alone appbooks, I have to admit that this one has some interesting features. Some of them, such as the “original music score” or “buckets of gory animation”, sound like needless gimmicks, but I am intrigued by the way the app incorporates both the “And Zombies” version and the original novel, Pride and Prejudice. When held right-side-up, the device displays the zombified work; turned upside-down it displays the original, and held in landscape it displays both side by side for a comparison.
This does sound like a case where the interactivity of an electronic platform adds something more than just portability to reading. I’d like to see more of this kind of thing.
I am personally sure there is a market for this kind of specialist, multimedia product as the future transpires. Great pieces of writing embedded in apps that provide lots of accompanying content, such as film excerpts, original manuscript views, interviews with writers/actors. The list is endless for this limited market.