Publishers are capitalising on the popularity of electronic books, or ebooks, by releasing versions of literally classics with orchestral scores and sound effects such as crunching gravel added in.
Using technology to monitor how fast a person is reading on their portable device, the ebooks play a soundtrack that matches the storyline and adds the correct noises as the action unfolds.
The first so-called “enhanced ebook” was released in the UK last Friday. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventures of the Speckled Band is soundtracked with driving rain, thunderclaps and blood-curdling screams.
Books by Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling are also available, with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare to follow.
The new technology has been launched in the UK by Booktrack, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, who is a board director of Facebook and the man behind PayPal, the successful online payment company.
Booktrack claims to add “movie-quality sound” to books. According to its website it is a “totally immersive experience that pulls the reader into the author’s world and allows the real world to melt away”.
The soundtracked ebooks run on tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad. At present they are thought not to play on e-readers such as Kindle.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8728105/Soundtracked-ebooks-launch-in-UK.html
The soundtracked ebooks run on tablet computers such as Apple’s iPad. At present they are thought not to play on e-readers such as Kindle.
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