The future of e-books: iPad's Bram Stoker's Dracula

Posted At : February 15, 2011 4:17 PM | Posted By : Andy Beaupre
Related Categories: Technology,Commentary

While e-books are growing in popularity, they represent only 8% of all books sold today. Sales will continue to climb as new concepts hit the market like the iPad-based Official Stoker Family Edition of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula.

This isn’t your Mom’s Kindle e- book.

While it’s the original 1897 Stoker tome, Dracula has been wonderfully re-imagined. Most of the 300 pages come alive, driven by a game engine developed for the Apple iPad by PadWorx Digital Media. This enables readers to experience a book in a whole new way, from social media to gameplay to touch screen interaction.

And then there’s the glorious, shiny, iPad color “pop.” When blood trickles and howling wolves walk across the page, it’s mesmerizing.

There are hundreds of interactive experiences in this iPad Dracula. The compound effect is addictive. We’ve all talked about books “we can’t put down,” but this app takes the expression to a new level:

Can’t read a page because it’s too dark? Light a candle, then move it closer to the text.
A heavy gravestone slab is blocking your path… so… drag it and listen as the stone scrapes and moves away.
As Stoker describes Lucy being hypnotized, she appears in illustrated form, eyes open. Move your finger across her face and she falls into a trance.
Press the tip of a transfusion needle and blood flows through the tube.
Tilt the iPad and a character’s face changes from glorious to macabre.
Blow leaves off a tombstone so you can read the text beneath.

But the real kick, for me, were the small, unexpected touches like…

Snow falling across the page…Touch an envelope and out comes a handwritten letter…Press a (blood) red word and it launches you to a just-received telegram…Rats scramble across the page… Open the window of an insane asylum and peer inside…Unlock a mausoleum’s door with a key…Feed sugar to flies as they buzz across a page.

Music plays a key role in setting the mood. Each of the book’s 27 chapters features original, full-length songs – activated by touching a drop of blood. Eerie music starts playing when you’re reading a particularly creepy or suspenseful passage.

If all this wasn’t enough, there are eight “bonus” forms of content hidden within the application, including:

The entire 1922 film Nosferatu, based on the 1897 Bram Stoker Dracula
The entire Orson Welles radio adaptation of Dracula
The death certificate of Bram Stoker

“It really is a different kind of reading experience," said Jeffrey Schechter of PadWorx Digital Media.

He got that right. Dracula is the future of e-books. And you get all this for $4.99.

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