“Good design is invisible”—Peter Collingridge
Lucky me! After just a bit of Twitter pestering and email harassment, I had the good fortune of virtually meeting and chatting with Peter Collingridge.
Peter is the co-founder of Enhanced Editions—tailorers of feature-packed bookish iPhone apps. Peter’s varied background includes 12 years experience in trade publishing, web, film, and digital marketing, working at Canongate Books, Screenbase Media and Apt Studio—all of which turned out to be quite handy experience for the Enhanced Editions venture. He’s really smart and talented, and I’m not the only one who thinks so, as the London Evening Standard has named as one of the “50 Most Influential” in publishing, and he was shortlisted for the UK Publishing Entrepreneur of the Year.
Enhanced Editions does a fabulous job of creating multi-media apps for books. They incorporate opt-in audio, video, and other features to lend a whole new dimension to the reading experience. My line of questioning for Peter focused around Enhanced Editions’ very cool, newly released iPhone app for Nick Cave’s latest novel, The Death of Bunny Munro (right photo). You can check the app out at iTunes (the first three chapters are available for free download). I highly recommend you do so. And, if there is something horribly wrong with you and Nick Cave (photo) is not your cup of tea, well do not despair. Enhanced Editions has many more bookish apps on the way, including Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope, and two titles from The Wire’s David Simon.
KM: How did the project originate/what motivated you to create the Enhanced Editions app in the first place?
PC: I’ve spent the last 12 years working between publishing and tech, mainly building websites for publishers, and undertaking creative marketing for books, publishers, and trying to use tech to encourage people to read more. So I’m always thinking about how to translate things from one medium to another.
That’s the background. With Enhanced Editions, two things—actually three—happened.
First – I blogged on the launch of the app store and then (second) a publisher got back to me saying, "we’re publishing houses, not software houses" which opened a certain part of my brain. At the same time, other friends in the business gave me huge support for it saying – you must do this!
And the third part was when Steve Jobs said that people don’t read, which opened another bit. There was definitely an opportunity and no-one seemed to be taking it. That was all the motivation I needed.
I called my (now) co-founder, who is based in NY and a major mobile / iPhone evangelist, as well as super smart. We began talking it thru. I went on holiday, we talked it thru some more. We brought in another friend, a business consultant, and spoke to some more of the Apt team. Talked it thru, sketched it out. Very quickly the whole idea had taken shape.
KM: How would you describe the app for Bunny Munro (it’s not really a book, it’s not really an audiobook, it’s not really a video, what do you call it)?
PC: We say that we tailor-make books for the iPhone.
Someone very smart said to me recently, "this is a device that has eyes, ears, a mouth, knows where it is and which way it is pointing." The challenge we set ourselves was exactly that – how do we translate a book to this kind of a device in a way that creates a valuable new user experience and adds to the writing?
KM: Does the fact that the Bunny Munro app is basically a new medium make it easier, or more difficult to publicize and market?
PC: The publicity has been amazing, but despite that I think people find it hard to "get."
When we say that we’ve made a Nick Cave app, people expect a Kylie-drowning game or something frivolous. Actually, the app is quite sober and has been designed to disappear around the content it contains.
As for the marketing – this is absolutely a new product ("the digital book") which has challenges but also huge opportunities. We’re learning, but our hope is that as we release more and more of our titles, the "enhanced edition" will become a known – optional – product among aficionados who recognise the quality and value they add. If you just want the text, then you’ll find it elsewhere.
KM: How did you organize the collaborative nature of the work on the app? Did it start with the writing? With an idea for the format? Who "Directed"/"produced/" and how?
PC: Enhanced Editions began before Bunny Munro was even commissioned; we knew we wanted to do this thing about 16 months ago and before we had any specific titles in the schedule. We were just very lucky that the publishing strategy Canongate had for Bunny fitted so well with our feature set.
On Bunny, the roles broke down really simply:
– Writing: Nick
– Films: Iain & Jame
– Audio: Iain & Jane & Nick & Warren & Canongate
– App: us
It was a beautiful collaboration and one which worked incredibly well.
KM: To date, what has been the most challenging aspect of your work on Bunny Munro (the app)?
PC: Honestly? I would say it was the review / approval process with Apple. I think we’ve got through it fine now, but it was pretty stressful. Mainly because of the time it takes and the opacity of the process: you just don’t know what is happening.
But now we’re through it, things feel a lot better.
KM: How is—or how do you intend/hope-the app experience to be different for the reader/viewer/listener(?) than the straight book reading experience?
PC: It’s important to say that it’s an optional experience. You don’t have to listen, or read and listen, or watch. It’s how you want it to be. Having said that, we hope that the Bunny app experience is exactly how Nick imagined the novel to be: a combination of words, reading, music, tone, intent, performance.
We hope that we are leveraging those characteristics of the device to add value without being superfluous. That is the only criteria we have when we approach these projects.
As for the experience; our goal was (somewhat frivolously) to make the reading software apple would make—seeing as they weren’t going to do it themselves!
KM: Is engagment/interactivity between the reader and the story a big focus of your work on Bunny Munro and future book apps? Do you think you have accomplished this? How so?
PC: Our app is about engagement with the content – yes. But interactivity, not so much. I think on Bunny, Iain and Jane have done an amazing job on that interaction taking place in the audio. But one thing we know is that reading is pretty personal and we don’t want to interpolate ourselves, or much else into that relationship. We can build stuff "around" it and online (this is what Apt does, really) – but the "reading" should be left between the reader and the content.
One of our core design principles is that "good design is invisible." So actually, if anything, the focus is on removing ourselves from the relationship between the reader and the content.
Someone gave us a three star review on the app store – our worst! – saying that "the ‘designers’ who put this app together have used off the shelf iphone menu styling and transitions which cheapens the whole experience" which actually we took as a great compliment!
KM: Was the work influenced by the games industry? How so?
PC: Not really; although many years ago I did produce a web site for Life of Pi which was an odd combination of animation, film and computer game.
KM: How does music fit into the storytelling of Bunny Munro?
PC: I think the audiobook production is not only one of the most ambitious audiobooks ever attempted, but that it carries it off perfectly. I seriously think that Iain and Jane deserve Grammies for this! All I can say is listen to the book (or the first three chapters at least) and you’ll see.
KM: How about the Video/Visuals? How were the music and other media produced? How were they factored into production costs?
PC: These were produced, again through artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (who shoots many of Nick’s promos) through Canongate in support of the other materials; so the audiobook production already included the costs of producing these.
KM: Did you license the content, or are you providing a service for the publisher?
PC: We’re effectively co-publishing with Canongate and their partners such as FSG/Faber and Text / HarperCollins.
KM: How were the territorial rights worked out for digital — did Canongate retain the international digital rights? Is there any consensus on how digital rights are being handled in development of book apps?
PC: Actually, I’m not entirely sure on the entire digital spectrum of rights (e.g epub rights, audio download rights). What I know is that we worked very closely with Text, FSG/Faber and HC Canada to copublish in those territories. They all got the project straight away and have been fantastic and very smart throughout.
KM: As you move forward with the other titles that you are working on, is the process one that can be easily duplicated? Or, will you have to "reinvent the wheel" so to speak for each title?
PC: The core experience: reading (with tilt scroll, typography options, send to a friend, etc) is totally built in to all our apps, as is the audio sync and of course the video and news feed. On other titles we may have just video, or no video, or even no audio or video at all. But these will still be recognisable from the Bunny App. They all share the core codebase and that codebase is being updated the whole time.
On top of that, and as design masochists we have also chosen to introduce tiny flourish details to each app; the icon, the colour of the bookmark, the "back to contents" icon on each chapter, mainly because we like that. These aren’t cookie cutter apps – they’re tailor made. And for certain titles we will be making other unique features. But on the whole, yes, this is a shared codebase with all of our apps.
People naturally get very excited about the enhancements, but we actually think that the detail we’ve given to the reading experience is a significant improvement on many of the other experiences out there.
KM: Is there worry from the publishers you are working with that the multimedia version of the work will cannibalize sales of the printed work?
PC: None whatsoever. I think publishers are *really* excited by this, as are authors and agents and even magazines, newspapers, and other businesses who have been in touch. Maybe publishers are worried by this, but they’re not the ones getting in touch with us!
KM: You had mentioned the bunny app was doing really well on iTunes uk store, but having a slower go of it on US store. What do you attribute the slower start here to?
PC: Actually, it’s doing OK and picking up in the US and I take it back!
I think that the PR cycle following Nick was just a week or so behind the UK. The sampler is picking up in the USA as well, now it is approved. So actually, I think that there is very much a PR/download ratio and that’s just a factor of Nick’s visit to the US.
Outside of this example, we’re working on a number of projects to try and collaborate with all rights holders to present a unified app and user experience. It’s not easy, but the alternative is pretty unsatisfactory, and makes it worth trying for. Bunny has been a great test case for this kind of collaboration.
KM: Have you had any negative feedback regarding how large the file for Bunny is? Do people (stupid people, such as myself) find themselves confused that the app takes more than10 seconds to download, then go running for their husband to "fix it?"
PC: Actually, a lot less than we expected. Like almost none. Someone bought the audiobook version and wondered why they didn’t have an app, just the ebook component; and others remain confused by how much space is required. (Tip: for any app you need twice as much space as the app for install).
But, no, proportionally, well within expected ranges. I think people get that this is a big app, with loads of high quality audio and video, and that you need space for that.
The "not available on 3G" download is a shame. But, you know, what can we do?
KM: You can add a warning: "If you are Kat Meyer, please have your husband install this app." It will save much time and heartache.
So, my final question (until next time) – what are you reading lately, and how are you reading it?
PC: Tom Pynchon’s Inherent Vice< /font>, in HBK.
Margaret Atwood’s After the Flood, in proof
lots of our forthcoming titles, in EE format… 🙂
