Publishers Hustle to Make eBooks More Immersive

Though the rewards promise to be great, the adaptation book publishers must make is far more complicated than that faced by the music and movie industries, which essentially needed to digitize their current products. Bookmakers must become multimedia companies—creating audio, video and interactive components for their immersive, built-for-tablets offerings.

They also face a dizzying array of decisions brought on by evolving standards and platforms: Should a certain book come to life as a dedicated app...Or should it be turned into an “enhanced eBook,” which will work on Apple’s tablet as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble’s Nook and other