Creating Enhanced eBooks

Enhanced eBooks are eBooks that provide more engagement for the reader. Adding interactivity to your eBooks can make them more enticing to readers and provide a richer experience overall; recently To Kill a Mockingbird was released as an enhanced eBook, and the preorders were record-breaking. There are a number of occasions when enhanced eBooks are recommended:

• Historical accounts. When studying history, it can be invaluable to be able to listen to or watch important speeches embedded in the reading.
• How-tos. From cooking to painting, instructional videos that accompany the text can be very beneficial to the reader.
• Business. Linking to company websites or stock tickers related to a business discussed in a book can provide a more in-depth experience.

Can Fiction Be Successfully Enhanced? Many question the benefit of enhancing fiction eBooks, but we believe enhanced eBooks offer indie authors a way to provide a more engaging and memorable experience for their readers. How can indie authors create worthy enhancements? Try these ideas:

• Create a link to have a SoundCloud album play during specific scenes.
• Create quotables that readers can click to tweet while reading, that include a buy link for the eBook.
• Create a link for readers to submit their ideas for casting the movie version of your eBook’s characters.
• Include video messaging from the author at the end of the eBook.

There are a number of ways to make enhanced eBooks work for fiction. Share your ideas about enhanced eBooks with us on Facebook.