TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Vidbook review: Lady Amelia’s Secret Lover

By David Rothman

Remember the old Mystery Science Theater on TV? You’d hear wry comments on movies in the vein of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Now, suppose the same could happen within a romance e-novel.

But in this case you’d see and hear the author herself speaking out, not to knock her work but to enjoy the fun with her readers.

That’s exactly what best-selling author Victoria Alexander does in Lady Amelia’s Secret Lover. It’s the very first video book from HarperCollins and maybe even from a major publisher. Who knows, this vidbook review might itself be a first. Meanwhile vids are also due for other HarperCollins books in the sci-fi and self-help categories.

The plot and other bookish matters

Via an earlier TeleBlog item, you already know the basic concept of the vidbook. HarperCollins embeds video clips, on which you can click when you run across them—half a dozen or so in Secret Lover, including one tied to a promo for Secrets of a Proper Lady, a 26-page sample of which HarperCollins includes in Lover.

I agree with HarperCollins’ cautious approach of not overwhelming the reader with videos. This is a book, not a video collection, although perhaps other titles will and should offer more video shots. It’s a title-by-title issue.

But what about the book as a book? Victoria Alexander (more bio information here) has written more than 20 books. Although an e-book original, not a p-book, Secret Lover shows the craft you would expect from a veteran of the romance genre.

The plot is a variant on an old one. A woman finds her husband’s ardor waning and decides that some cooked-up competition could add a little spice. The big issue here is whether he’ll fall for the bait or instead end up with an actual paramour—isn’t that a great Victorian word, even if its origins go back farther?—of his own?

In Lover’s 113 pages, Ms. Alexander’s prose does not leap out at you, but the mostly short sentences should be pleasant screen reading for fans of popular romance, and the dialogue works. Sample:

“‘Very well, I admit my eye may have wandered in recent months,’ Robert said reluctantly.

“‘Has it?’”

“Robert shrugged off the question. ‘On occasion, perhaps.’”

“‘Only your eye?’”

“‘Yes, only my eye,’ Robert snapped. ‘It’s not un-common , after some length of marriage, for a man’s eye to wonder.’”

“‘As long as the eye is the only part of you wandering.’”

Format, usability and DRM angles

Sony Reader reviews have trotted out terms such as “first draft,” and the phrase is apt here. I like HarperCollins’s spirit of adventure and will look forward to future refinements, such as vidbooks using the new IDPF epub standard. Anyone know if a Adobe’s Adobe InDesign CS3 can produce multimedia epub format books without much fuss?

HarperCollins used the proprietary DNL format, read on the DNL Reader, rather than a popular alternative such as Adobe or Mobipocket. As much as we need to raze the Tower of eBabel, the e-book standards movement must not discourage valuable experiments like this. That said, based on my experience with this book, I’m not a DNL Reader booster. I liked the novice-friendly feature of clicking on the left or right page to move back or ahead, and you can even do notes, highlighting and searching. But I apparently couldn’t change the size or style of the fonts, despite such bells and whistle as auto-page turning. I know. HarperCollins wanted to use a paper book paradigm, but it would be far, far better off with a reflowable XHTML-based reflowable approach of the kind that epub uses.

Right off the bat, the on-the-go reader is at a disadvantage since DNL won’t run on PDAs and cellphones, often the most convenient variety for e-reading away from home (luckily HarperCollins makes other format choices available—Adobe, eBook Reader, Gemstar eBook, Mobipocket, PalmReader and Sony).

What’s more, at least on my system I found DNL software confusing. You don’t have a desktop icon to click on. Rather you reach your already-downloaded books by clicking on the file name in MyComputer or some other software.

With DNL, HarperCollins chose a DRM option, which limits the number of copies. I hope that HarperCollins eventually switches to Social DRM, if it insists on anti-piracy precautions which I know it does—in other words, embedding users’ names and e-mail addresses rather than relying on the usual encryption-based approach.

Can’t you imagine Victoria Alexander looking her readers in the eye and delivering some clever warning not to pirate and to heed the reminder in the text surrounding the personal information? I know a well-regarded literary agent who jokes about sending “bad karma” notes to offenders. That’s the kind of low-key approach that a HarperCollins author could use here. Regard fans as friends, not jail bait.

Meanwhile HarperCollins is experimenting with ways for readers to send each other samples of books or at least the links. That is A Good Thing, as a means for people to sample the company’s wares legally after receiving the best kind of recommendation—the word-of-mouth or word-of-keyboard variety.

Author participation, including samples of comments

Speaking of Ms. Alexander, HarperCollins’s Theresa Horner tells me: “The author video elements were created by the author. Victoria Alexander conceived of the idea and wrote the ’script’ as well. I think readers will enjoy having the author’s take on her own work.” Exactly. Samples:

• “Lusting in his heart? Please, we all know what that can lead to. Lusting, hah! So…” (page 25).
• “‘More brandy?’ Duh! I would think that if your husband just said he was going to help you find a lover, brandy is the very least of what you would need. ‘She nodded in stunned silence.’” (page 53).
• “There’s nothing like a little friendly blackmail to pick up a woman’s spirits. I know I always feel better when blackmail is involved” (page 70).
• “So Harry is not only in the middle of all this, but it’s not going to cost him anything. Even when it comes to his own brother, Harry really is a player. I like it.” (page 82).

Sales so far–and the interactivity issue

So how are sales? Not until a few days ago did HarperCollins tell anyone that the Secret Lover vidbook was available, so it’s too early to know. So far the related blog has drawn just a few comments. It will be interesting to see if the blog inspires readers to engage truly with the book.

My own belief is that the inclusion of moderated comment capability within the book itself would be helpful—even more so than the laudable experimentation with video. The IDPF badly needs to encourage this in future versions of the epub by arriving at a good annotations standard, useful not just in academic publishing but in the trade variety.

Future possibilities

“This is in fact the first video e-book from Harper,” Theresa says. “We are currently planning more but we are eager to see the response from this one. Every genre is different and we don’t presume putting videos in books is always appropriate. Certain consumers, certain subject matters will work and others simply should be avoided. I think there is plenty of room for publishers to experiment with videos and text whether it’s a marketing vehicle or an actual product. Any way we can use new technology and different mediums to drive awareness of the author and the book is good for reading.” Of course, Theresa, and we’ve got company at vendors such as Book Glutton, which “is launching a web-based e-book reader” designed with a “firm commitment to community.”

How-to-books in particular, as I see it, should be great applications for both video and community-style interactivity. Whether or not HarperCollins and Victoria Alexander can enjoy a big response to Lady Amelia’s Secret Lover, I hope they’ll hang in there and keep experimenting.