Composer, performer, author Nick Cave comes to the iPhone
By Paul Biba
This is from the Guardian, one of my favorite newspapers. But, first, the Wikipedia article telling us a bit about him:
Nick Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, painter, and occasional film actor. He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984. Before that, he had fronted the group The Birthday Party in the early 1980s, a band renowned for its highly dark, challenging lyrics and violent sound influenced by free jazz, blues, and post-punk. In 2006, he formed the garage rock band Grinderman that released its debut the following year. Cave’s music is generally characterized by intensity and a wide variety of influences.
Here is what Mr. Cave says about his new book:
The novelist and music legend Nick Cave is sprinkling a little rock’n'roll glamour over publishing’s latest front in the battle for readers, by releasing an iPhone version of his new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro. The text, which scrolls downwards on chapter-length virtual pages, is accompanied by readings and music specially recorded by the author himself.
“Bunny Munro was perfect for this kind of thing,” said Cave. “Being a musician as well, I’ve been able to provide all sorts of other things to make it as interesting an experience as possible to read this book on the iPhone … The strangest thing for me is that almost all musicians feel that we are chasing the tail of something beyond our grasp with music downloading and so on but, quite by accident, with the publishing of this book I’m suddenly involved with something that is taking the bull by the horns and that’s quite exciting.” …
” … I’ve suddenly found myself at the cutting edge of the way we may read books in the future but it’s all been something of a surprise to me. I see the paper copy as the real book. I sat down and wrote a novel, and that was difficult enough in itself without considering what the music would be. However, as a songwriter, I do have a naturally musical way of writing and [the book] has lent itself well to being scored, musically. It is a unique situation where you can write a novel and make music to it as well; it can be a different way of taking in a piece of literature.”
September 1st, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Hi Paul
That sounds really interesting…
Is this the abridged or the unabridged audiobook from the iTunes Store or maybe some other e-book version?
Thank you!
September 1st, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Hi. I’m the co-founder of Enhanced Editions, and a regular reader of Teleread and occasional commentor here. I’ve worked in the publishing industry for 12 years, and am based in the UK.
We’ve been working on this app (and others) for the best part of a year. It’s been in review with Apple since August 10th. We’re trying not to do any publicity on it until Apple “approve” (or reject) the app, which is now 50% over their advertised “14 day” approval cycle for 94% of apps. The Guardian article is a little lite on details from us, but it has been hard stemming the interest in this amazing project.
Our codebase has already been approved for another app, an Enhanced Edition of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father (which is not yet available at our behest). Apple today launched the podcast of Nick Cave, and the audiobook (contained in our app) on iTunes,
We think the app is awesome and previews will soon be available at http://www.enhanced-editions.com and we’d love to talk to Teleread about this in due course.
Suffice to say that we believe that this app – when it gets approved – will be a milestone in the development of ebooks and one which we hope you’ll cover.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Sorry, my second line ought to have said, “Is this talking about the audiobook available from the iTunes Store or maybe some other e-book version?”
(I just discovered there’s only one version in the US iTunes Store. Fancy that, us Europeans getting the broader selection for once! They’re both unabridged, though one is labelled “Explicit”…)
September 1st, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Hi. We’ve combined the audiobook (unabridged, read by Nick and featuring his original soundtrack), with the ebook, and synched them up to each other along with a load of videos of nick reading.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
They seem to be selling the ePub on the official website.
http://www.thedeathofbunnymunro.com/buy.html
And since they email you the file, I can only guess it’s without DRM.
Too bad it costs so much (£12.99 compared to £8.49 for the paperback in Amazon).
I’ll probably get it anyway
They also have the audiobook for download, but only through Audible.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
@ori: That might not be the “enhanced edition” mentioned here. At least it’s about two ££ cheaper than the iTunes/Audible audiobook by itself.
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Hey guys. For what it’s worth, the App will be priced (when it gets approved) at GBP 14.99, which is App Store tier 25, I think USD 25. That is indeed cheaper than the audio book, and the ebook, and certainly cheaper than both combined.
September 5th, 2009 at 8:49 am
The Death of Bunny Munro (the iTunes app) became available on the App Store this morning, I just downloaded it and read/listened to the first two chapters. My impression so far is of a well-put-together piece of software based on an excellent idea. It’s quite a treat listening to Nick Cave read, accompanied by fiddles in the wings!
From the documentation it appears that this is an app that might receive updates like any other app (it even has a “News” button built in) and if that’s the case, there would be one more option on my wishlist:
Auto-scroll… This has been debated in the past on TeleRead, is that really a necessary feature for e-books? I think it is, especially for this one, where the author’s voice determines the pace of progression anyway. The way this app jumps ahead in sudden shifts from paragraph to paragraph makes tagging along a bit confusing. Besides, some paragraphs are longer than one page, which means that you only *hear* certain parts when in Audio Mode, they stay hidden beneath the bottom of the screen before it jumps again. I’m used to the auto-scroll in eReader on Palm and iPhone, so it might be tough to get used to these jumps between paragraphs.
But all-in-all, this kind of app (and the experience it delivers) might just rival some of the best audiobooks, literature over the airwaves *and* e-books all at the same time!
Over and out…
September 6th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Before I forget, it’s a big bunny this one, 893 MB to be exact! It took me about 30 mins to download to my iPhone over WiFi.
September 6th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
@Soren
Thanks so much for the feedback and the review here – it means a lot to us. I’m delighted that you acknowledge the great deal of thought and consideration that has gone into the app.
As for your feature requests – I just thought I’d make a few points:
- There is indeed an in-app news feed which is for exclusive news about Nick Cave, such as gigs and exclusive material, as well as first news on other Enhanced Editions. You can opt in or out.
- Updates will also happen to the app (we have some great features planned) but they will happen as “updates” in the usual way.
- There are a few ways of reading:
– “Straight up”. This is without audio on, and you can either scroll with your finger (like on a web page), or using the device’s tilt-scroll. Tilt scroll can either be set at one of a few speeds, or at the tilt of the device, using the accelerometer.
– “Audio Sync Mode”. This is with the audio book and the ebook synched to each other, so you can read at the same pace as the audio. Note that this is synched paragraph for paragraph, and yes it does “jump” up the screen to make sure you are at the right place. However on longer paragraphs you can also scroll down (as above) to see the words “off the page”. When you get to the end of the paragraph, the app will jump to the beginning of the next paragraph.
– “Audio Only Mode”. If you don’t want to read along, you can just turn the app off (or put the device to sleep) using the button on the top of the device, and (like iTunes) the audio will keep playing to you.
Thanks again for the feedback and review. It is version 1.0 only, and we’re aware of lots of things we want to improve, but for now, we’re delighted to get detailed feedback like this.
September 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Looking forward to the rest of the novel!
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 am
Thanks for the link to the long one. ,