Thursday, May 10, 2012

Warner Options Films to eBooks


Warner Bros. announced it would sell four of the movie studio's classic scripts -- CASABLANCA, BEN-HUR, AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, and NORTH BY NORTHWEST -- as enhanced ebooks for Kindle, Nook, and iPad. It's the first part of a large-scale initiative in which they hope to turn hundreds of scripts into ebooks.  The WSJ reports each title will retail for $10 and "includes the film's actual shooting script and rare historical documents from the Warner Bros. archives."

 President of Warner Bros. digital distribution Thomas Gewecke told the paper the company "had been looking at a variety of ideas to leverage some of the assets we had at the studio. We quickly realized there was all of this new e-book technology that we could use to create an interesting and compelling literary property."

Following the trend, DemiBooks launches their own apps-as-children's ebookstore, Storytime, which allows authors to sell their books directly into the free iPad app store as well as use the service as a distribution platform. (Launch partners including McGraw-Hill Education and Kane Miller.) Storytime will be integrated with the Facebook social graph and is also partnering with Usborne Books & More, the direct sales division of Education Development Corporation.

Frommer's has teamed up with Inkling to produce seven "truly interactive" travel guides from the company's Day by Day series for iOS devices, priced between $9.99 and $14.99. "We've long wanted a way to deliver a rich interactive travel guide experience across mobile platforms," said Global Publisher of Frommer's Rob Flynn in a statement. "Our partnership with Inkling lets us provide travelers with all the inspirational, insightful, and practical information they want with the added functionality and convenience that mobile devices offer. And since it's all cross-platform, from iPad to iPhone, they're just as useful for planning at home as they are for recommendations on the road."





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