Integrating media into eBooks is a popular concept. The question is, “Is it good for your eBook?” Ask yourself the following question to determine whether you want to add the extra expense of creating and gathering media for inclusion in your eBook.
Will the media enhance your reader’s experience or diminish it?
Let’s consider fiction, such as a novel.
What makes works of fiction so compelling? Isn’t the ability of the author to create pictures in our minds that make it hard to put the book down? So how could media enhance your reader’s experience or diminish it?
Let’s ask another question to get to the answer. Why does a Hollywood version of a book never satisfy? Isn’t it because it doesn’t measure up to the experience you had as a reader? In the same way, if you control too many aspects of the ‘visual’ experience of your reader in a fiction eBook, you short-circuit the creative experience. You could even degrade your book to the level of a video game story line.
At the same time, you can enhance your reader’s experience by adding audio media in eBooks. Consider a scene where music plays a role in the story line. Background sounds that are described in the story could be part of the audio experience, bringing the story to life without controlling too much of the reader’s experience. You could add pictures of the neighborhood the character is walking through if this would heighten the experience of the story.
