Last weekend, the Vook office was robbed. What a sinking feeling to walk into work and discover that we were hit by some thugs. This was particularly worrisome because the entire team was locked down engineering the Vookmaker platform with a November 1 delivery deadline looming.

There is another side to this lousy story. One, we did not lose anything that valuable beyond equipment that could be replaced. Two, we were up and running Monday morning without a slip in production, and the awesome Vook tech team delivered “Iteration 6″ of the new platform on Wednesday, on time.

Then, there is the NYPD. Two patrolmen showed up at the office within thirty minutes of us reporting the crime. Then, two CSI print-unit officers were on the scene, followed by two detectives. This impressive group of professionals were thorough, respectful and deliberate in their investigation. They immediately made progress on our case.

Feeling like vulnerable California transplants, the NYPD made us feel taken care of.

This event has become the bar for how Vook will release its beta product to a diverse, influential and smart group of publishers, authors and agents who will be part of our closed beta on November 1.

We will overwhelm them with support, good attitude and follow-through.

The NYPD spirit is alive and well at Vook.

The Kindle Fire and the newer, cheaper Kindles mean an additional retail outlet. A round-up of Amazon’s new prices:

• Kindle Fire (tablet) $199
• Kindle $79
• Kindle Touch $99
• Kindle Touch 3G $149
• Kindle Keyboard $99
• Kindle Keyboard 3G $139

Amazon is already experiencing pre-orders for the Kindle Fire, and we’ll also see regular Kindle sales jump. When the iPad launched, Vook sales tripled the next day and have only increased since then. When the iPad 2 launched, we also saw a significant lift in sales. Devices just move more books. And kudos to Amazon for picking a magic price point. Ereaders will be in the hands of more of readers soon, and you can expect that they’ll be demanding high-quality digital content as well.

The Kindle Fire is an attractive device. With access to Amazon’s cloud library and it’s 7″ color screen, the Kindle Fire will support video, high-quality images, and excellent ebook design. If you’re not already doing digital, you’re going to miss out.

Our digital publishing platform, VookMaker, is ever closer to public release — and our vision of an easy-to-use ebook creation, distribution and sales reporting platform. And yes! This is exciting, this platform we have developed. And yes! We are excited. But — a platform is only as good as what people make with it — which is why we’re even more excited that Apple recognizes the high quality, awesome looking eBooks VookMaker can produce. How do we know this? Because they have just launched a 15 TITLE PROMOTION for the video enhanced fitness series we produced with Gaiam. You can see it by clicking here!

This is a front page promotion, sharing the stage with Mark Bowden, Lee Child, and Rin Tin Tin. Our hats off to you, other authors and dog subjects. We are honored to be in your fine company up there on the front page. And we are also so proud of our platform, VookMaker, because it produced these very fine looking titles very quickly. This, ladies and gentleman, is what VookMaker can do for you. And what you can do with VookMaker. Soon!

A recent NYT story on news organizations publishing digital books read almost like a historical review of the inevitable than a piece on innovation—at least at Vook HQ.

As soon as pro-sumer video cameras and desktop editing made it possible to easily create and place video on Webpages, news organizations quickly adapted the technology. Digital publishing is going to become  just as prevalent.

It makes sense: News organizations feature the best writing by the best writers who are constantly turning out exceptional articles—ie. ‘generating content.’ A friend of ours at the AP worked in the Haiti Bureau through the earthquake and ‘generated a volume of content’, which only gets more gripping when you read it in collected form.

Our VookMaker platform (invite only! Write me to get onboard at Matthew@vook.tv!) makes publishing exceptional looking digital books out of news stories a snap. And if the technology exists — well, maybe I won’t have to settle for one David Carr column at a time, but pick up his collected works when I’m skimming his next piece #shamelessDavidCarrrfanboyism.

As our Vookmaker platform continues to progress feverishly, the Vook office has been buzzing with chatter about platform aesthetics, features, functionality, and user experience design (UX).

The world of digital publishing and building a robust self-publishing platform is very new to me. Before coming to Vook, I was completing my degree in Philosophy and Religion from San Francisco State University where my primary focus was Buddhist and Hindu religious philosophy. (Does this make me Vook’s in-house philosopher?)

Back to the point, how the heck are my studies going to help me be successful working for a digital publisher and tech company in NYC?

Well, by playing philosophical connect-the-dots and approaching UX design as a nexus of user-centric philosophies, my existential quandary began to dissipate.

The other night, after an hour or so of trolling the web, I stumbled across Meghasri Dalvi’s 2007 article entitled, Effective User Assistance Design: Ten Best Practices. Something in her closing statement caught my attention. Her 10th Tip was “Practice Kaizen”. Huh? Turns out, Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous incremental improvement”. It’s the notion that there never exists a time where there isn’t room for updates and improvements. Hmm. I mulled it over for a minute. Having been steeped in philosophy for the last several years my mind wandered, “Kaizen. Sounds like zazen.” I thought about the two concepts and noticed a unique philosophical connection.

Zazen is a specific type of mindfulness meditation practiced by Zen Buddhists. In the few zazen sittings I have attended, interestingly, the process works quite similarly to that of usability testing. I know, it seems like a stretch but hear me out. The zen practitioner meticulously focuses on each individual breath along with every thought, sound, smell, or other sensation that enters the mind. The practitioner is attentive and single-pointed in her search for stillness, yet this is achieved by being keenly aware of everything going on around them at every instant. The common misconception is that meditation is about emptying one’s thoughts when really, at least according to zazen, all the influx of sense data should be acknowledged, examined, understood, and then let go of if they are impositions to the primary goal of self-realization.

Over time, and with lots of practice, the person meditating develops a deeper awareness of the full scope of the implications caused by every “click of the mind”. We are constantly bombarded with a variety of stimuli, but rarely do we take time to investigate what is triggering those events and why they have the effects on us that they do. Every stimulation invokes a response no matter how subtle. However, without the benefit of a guided, structured, and formulaic, practice to help us “slow our roll” and peel back the layers to see what’s happening on a deeper level, we usually think nothing of it and go on about our day. In the various schools of eastern philosophy guidance comes in the form of a guru, a roshi, or perhaps a community (sanga) of like-minded people.

The UX sanga in web design is kind of like a modern day approach to web zazen. Zazen is to self-awareness as Kaizen is to customer or user awareness. Zazen says, “Oh, you think you know yourself? Well, sit for an hour or two (or a lifetime), be silent, monitor every thought and feeling as they occur in one moment, and as they pass into the next, note every detail and you’ll be surprised what’s really going on.”

In a very similar way, Kaizen says, “Hey Company X, so you think your product is good to go? Well it isn’t. Do more, keep going, go deeper, keep improving….continuous incremental improvements will reveal that your product is not as simple and perfect as you think.” Even outside of the design world, in the domain of engineering, this idea of Kaizen is echoed in the Agile model of development—continual small improvements with each and every iteration.

Both philosophies—east and west, ancient and modern—point us to a more nuanced awareness of individual psychologies. Both employ methods to examine our thoughts and actions. So, if you’re looking for self-realization—try zazen. If you’re looking to understand and impress your customers and deliver the optimal user experience—try Kaizan. Both will certainly keep you humble along the journey.

A post at TechCrunch by Eric Ries this morning  caught my attention — it speaks to a core issue we’re wrestling with as we engineer new features and functionality into our digital book creation platform, VookMaker. Ries asks the question, “How do you know you’re building the right product — if you’re not talking to your customers?” Of course, he asks a lot of other things — but I’m going to focus narrowly on the bit relevant to us, so read the article yourself to experience its larger points.

At Vook, we’ve gone from creating a large volume of titles for our partners and others to creating a platform they can use to make excellent digital books. They can also track sales, analytics, enhance, enrich, review, publish to multiple marketplaces — hopefully anything you’d want to do as a digital publisher. Which is the crux of this — what do people really want to do as digital publishers? We think we know –  but I’ve also championed a version of the Velveteen Rabbit with embedded YouTube videos of cute bunnies — so we’re aware we could use outside input and affirmation.

Which is why, as part of our business development process, our first step is to shut up and not talk — but find out what our potential partner or associate might need in a digital book creation tool that’s not immediately obvious.

Here’s some of the questions we’re asking:

• “Where is your greatest pain point with digital book creation?”
• “If you had to choose one function that would be most helpful in creating, managing, publishing and tracking your digital books, where do you need the most help?”
• “Do you want more control of your digital books — or do you want better outsourcing of conversion?”
• “If you could have the ability to control one aspect of the digital books you produce from your computer today, what would it be?”

What kind of questions do you think we should ask? Where are your needs? We’re building a tool that will help solve problems that exist today — and could get worse tomorrow. So write Matthew@vook.com and have us get started addressing them. Think of us as your solution builder.

You might have noticed that our Website changed over the weekend. Instead of a storefront landing page, you’re treated to a brief statement that distills our mission. We strive to make Vook “the easiest way to create, enhance and distribute digital books.”

When we launched with Simon & Schuster in September of 2009, we released some of the first enhanced eBooks in the world. Over the past two years, we’ve published more than 600 titles, seen more than a million downloads, worked with some incredible partners and authors, and helped define the landscape of digital publishing. It’s been a learning experience and an adventure. In the process, we’ve built a powerful platform that allows us to create graceful digital books with a drag and drop interface, track daily sales, centralize our metadata and easily publish titles to the marketplaces.

In the coming weeks, you’ll hear more about the Vook platform and its capabilities. But it’s already producing some outstanding work. Not only does the platform  make it easy to create and enhance digital books, it makes it easy to create great digital books. Watch this space to see examples soon.

Our founder and CEO Brad Inman often compares us to Lewis and Clark on their grand adventure — navigating the wilderness, not entirely sure where we are but fairly certain we’re on the right track. We’re soon going to return from the digital publishing wilds to share some of the powerful tools we’ve built to conquer it. We know there’s a growing audience of eager explorers ready to learn more. So stay tuned to our Twitter and our blog in the next weeks —  and see where we’re headed!

In the meantime, go sign up for the platform!