Earlier today I saw an item about fast thinking versus slow thinking, to do with social marketing (maybe you posted this?). The premise was that people who see something that impacts them quickly will share more quickly, versus having to slow down and think about what they’re reading. It felt like I was supposed to believe that fast thinking posts are more impactful and thus a better marketing strategy. My immediate thought was that the author felt that I should dumb down my marketing in order to attract the masses. On the other hand, I felt conflicted because my materials are not written for the dumb masses, and thus there is no point in using that strategy. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink!

So, what the tie-in between the two comments above? If you take away the complexities of building interactive ebooks, I would hope that there would still be enough authors who are interested in developing the minds of children through reading, albeit with interactivity, rather than blindly dumbing down the content for the sake of cheap (or perhaps long-term expensive) entertainment. As for the adults, who knows…

Enhanced ebooks, as currently conceived, are just really crappy software, By design. Why on earth would anyone want that?

Loved your insights. Wish I could agree entirely on the prospect of acceptability of ebooks; it may be a tenuous conjecture that the purportedly tech-savvy Gen Y lacks the smartness for using SMARTPHONES and all!
Wonder why?
Being the fool that I am, I read most all of my humble reads in epub formats using an app called MoonReader. It helps me highlight, underline, annotate everything necessary for A Recap and/or Reread. Do you honestly feel that our beloved and respected youths of posterity in the global village are as mindful toward decoding the MetaMeaning, if I am allowed to call it so, of life? I THINK NOT! In the myomantic sprint, with deepest respect to youth, ‘a ” life unexamined” is definitely worth its while in9 weights of gold: And I don’t blame them!!!!!

You have nailed the problem, Rob. If your work was available on multiple ebook formats and platforms it would help. But as I pointed out in my post, readers really seem stuck on ebooks being simply text. A tragedy really, but what can one do? It seems to me that the expression, ‘there’s an app for that’ is the killer. And the real killer is the cost of developing an app. While I imagine you took months and months to compile your book, the cost of turning your book into and app would involve development costs that would be absolutely astronomical. You’re right. Go with fiction and quick to write romantic vampire stories! lol