For those of you who aren’t gamers or don’t keep reddit open in a browser tab, Game of Thrones isn’t the only property turning television screens into Scandanvian Renaissance Festivals. Video game company Bethesda Software recently released Skyrim, an incredibly detailed, open world role playing game that shipped 3.4 million copies in 2 days and scored a 96 point overall average on review aggregator Metacritic.

It’s a definite blockbuster hit, but is it another reason for fantasy lovers to turn away from literature? Hardly. Skyrim’s littered with books — from romance novels to religious books to spell tomes to journals to straight fiction. You can pick up books, carry them around, deposit them in your house and read them in-game, paging through what’s estimated to be a thousand plus pages of actual text.  It’s that weird, possibly too potent perfect time-suck — a fantasy video game stocked with fantasy books that you read as a fantasy character you created.

Of course, it’s a self-limiting audience—even if we’re living post triumph of the nerds, most people are still adopting to digital books instead of actually fantastical digital books. But it’s interesting that Skyrim’s developers saw the potential to populate their world with books — a real life case of transmedia storytelling that doesn’t feel tacked on, but natural, even necessary.

Just a few days ago, I was discussing at Vook how video game companies – like Bethesda – could use Vook to produce eBook versions of their in-game lore. Sure, the audience is niche, but it’s an audience that’s committed. And when you make it as easy to create an eBook as Vook does, why would you skip the opportunity?

That’s the future of publishing. Or at least one path of the future. Companies who have rich, deep, intricate stories that don’t exist in “real-world” book form will start producing books independently. And if they have an audience they can reach digitally — they have a bookstore too.

We’re not the only ones with the idea. Metafilter today alerted me that the blogger behind capane.us had turned all of Skyrim’s in-game books into actual eBooks for the Mobi and ePub format.

It should send a message to video game and media companies everywhere: If your own users are hacking your content into book format, shouldn’t you put them together yourself? Email us at Vook today at Matthew@vook.com. Or just hang tight — we’ll be knocking on your door soon.

Everyday we get requests from people who want to build an eBook with Vook immediately. Everyday we look at what we’re building, what our users want and expect, and what we’ve committed to delivering. Our engineering team is working night and day (which isn’t hyperbole, I’ve interrupted them at 2 AM on our conference line in the past)—and the rest of us are constantly using and testing Vook, making sure it meets our standards.

On Thanksgiving, I’m not grateful for the elements we can control – our commitment, our resourcefulness, our smarts – I’m grateful for that harder to hit factor: What people want and what we’re building seem perfectly aligned.

I’m judging that interest by how many people sign up every day for our beta – and anecdotally by how many people have emailed me on Thanksgiving asking if they can use the platform while they have time off.

And we will ship to our beta users very soon. But today I wanted to share a segment of a clip I found on the Next Web’s Shareables site—a video of Steve Jobs brainstorming with the team at NeXT in the 80s about when they’re going to release their product.

Steve Jobs and NeXT UPDATE: You’ll want to start watching at the 8:00 minute mark for the relevant section.

The part I’m focused on starts 8:00 minutes into the video, during a brainstorm/debate/conversation between Steve and the team members, ranging from Product to Tech to Business. I’m not highlighting this clip to swoon over Job’s exceptionalism—but because it clearly shows how product innovation, consumer demands and the abilities of technology interact with and react to each other.

My favorite part? When Steve, slightly exasperated, says, “I can’t change the world.” Many people would consider that ironic – but I think Steve’s right. This clip shows it’s commitment,  intensity, and smart people pushing each other that make a difference.

Steve might have said, “I can’t change the world – but my company can.” And that’s the truth.

While most of New York was sleeping off Saturday night this past Sunday morning, Vook was answering a call from Diversion Books.

Diversion had an issue. They’d been working with billionaire businessman, investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to produce an eBook out of his blog content. But they had a sudden deadline: 5 AM Monday morning.

In the past, having to produce an eBook in hours and distribute it to the marketplaces would have required someone building the file, testing it, and then creating the right output formats. Diversion might have been out of luck.

But Diversion’s Scott Waxman has been working with Vook since our launch. He knew what our platform could do and made the call for help. We were able to get Diversion logged in, set up with an account, and hours later, presto!, they had a finished, sharp-looking eBook they were uploading to the markets.

The next morning, Mark Cuban had an eBook for sale and Jeffrey Trachtenberg had an article on Cuban’s groundbreaking publishing effort in the WSJ.

We couldn’t have asked for a better book, author, and publishing company for a gotcha test of Vook. And it worked. In fact, it’s the first eBook someone else has built and put on sale using Vook. We’re thrilled to be making the formerly impossible, or at least ridiculously difficult, possible — and maybe even pleasant.

Get the Cuban eBook — and see what you can build with Vook for yourself. And sign up for the beta at Vook.com!

I raved yesterday about going to the National Book Awards; now I’m trying to catch up on reading the winners I didn’t grab from our table display — and I’ve hit a problem.

Only 3 of the 4 National Book Award winning titles are available as eBooks—Nikky Finney’s collection of poems Head Off & Split is not available digitally. Dianna Dilworth also sharply caught this at eBook Newser, and I wish it was more widely remarked.

I run into this issue when I’m trying to get more obscure titles — but I’m a book nerd and I can live with my tastes being off beat and not always digitally available. But this seems an oversight that’s bigger than my interests.

Head Off & Split is a National Book Award Winner. And yes, I know, I can get it at a bookstore and support my local independent, but I like supporting the new digital publishing start-ups, and I don’t like going back to print. So, I want this in digital.

Which is why, because our platform’s so easy to use, if publisher Triquarterly or Nikky or anyone associated with this project would just send me the manuscript –just send me a word document! or paste it into an email! — I’ll produce a high end, nicely formatted flowable eBook for them in a few days, for free. I’ll do it myself. Again, for free.

I’ll even type the book into our tool if that’s what it takes—if they ok it.

Just someone, let me know. For my own sake. And note that this is an encouraging sign for 2012–you’ve got someone pleading to read a book of poetry as an eBook. Viva culture.

Matthew Cavnar

Matthew@vook.com

Vook

Representing Vook at the National Book Awards last night, I found myself sharing a table with Susan Minot, Calvin Trillin, Francine du Plexis Grey, Rachel Cobb, Morgan Entrekin and Elisabeth Schmitz.  If you enter those names into Google at once, the first result is the all caps phrase “EXCLAMATION POINT CLOSE QUOTE”—which about replicates how the experience felt, i.e. so thrilling it was constantly being shouted over the phone by my brain’s old-timey newsman.

We were one table from the stage — close enough I could pretend John Ashberry was speaking directly to me. When you’re listening to one of America’s greatest poets and Susan Minot is taking notes, you know Something. Is. Happening.

John Ashberry

The experience was lovely, the speeches moving, the room impressive. Walking to Cipriani’s, I passed Zucotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street was regrouping in the rain. Halfway through the ceremony, I realized that if you transported the protestors to the restaurant they’d probably agree — the magisterial environment fit the event, materialism doing its best to honor literature’s accomplishments of the spirit. Bankers and anarchists alike, I think, would recongize the values these awards revere.

I and Vook were proud to be a part of the occasion.

The other day someone asked, “What do you think digital publishing’s going to look like in six months?” I said, “Everyone’s going to be doing it.” Media companies, news organizations, movie studios, record labels—digital book production’s going to be as expected as a social media presence. The Guardian, Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal already publish their own books—today the L.A. Times released its first title, “A Nightmare Made Real” by reporter Christopher Goffard.

The book’s a Kindle, iBooks, and BN digital short, selling at 99 cents. I purchased it for the Kindle App for iPad and read it on a subway ride from Soho to Carrol Gardens, about 15 minutes. It documents the accusation against Louis Gonzalez III that he kidnapped and sexually assaulted Tracy West, the estranged mother of his son. The facts proved Gonzalez innocent, the evidence suggests West fabricated everything. The book moves along tersely with nice flourishes, such as describing how Gonzales now stares every security camera in the face. He’s constantly looking for third-party confirmation of what he’s doing, in case nobody believes him later.

Goffard originally wrote the story as a two-part piece for the Times this summer. The book enlarges on that, pulls the pieces together, gives the author room to expand. Goffard mentions Kafka twice, and the  story-as-parable stands out in eBook format.

As a book, it works. But there are some lessons for digital publishing.

Discovery: Without following links from press announcements, the book’s hard to find. Search L.A. Times in Amazon and iBooks and you get some Stuart Woods thrillers. I don’t remember the name of the defendant or the accuser and I’m not going to remember the book’s title. As a user, I had a hard time finding the book without help. The L.A. Times needs a landing page for their title, like what Google did for the ZMOT we produced together. And they need it tagged right. Search ‘L.A. Times book’ on Google now and you get their book section.

Cover: If Luis Sinco is on staff, the L.A. Times could get a more iconic image for their first book. Not to knock the photograph, but it’s more of an image sliver than anything that makes an impression. Beyond that, I can’t make out the cover clearly in the digital storefronts. The book needs clean design, and one sharp image. In digital marketplaces, the title always lives next to the cover so you don’t need to worry about cramming everything text-wise onto the face of a jpeg.

Enhancements: Maybe not worth the effort, but the little images affixed at the top of a few chapters could be more nicely integrated. They could add audio clips. It could be interesting if the book ended with a 10 second clip of Gonzales staring into some 7-11’s security camera.

It’s mostly marketplace elements you wish the Times did a little better. And no blame on them, this is a new type of product. The book’s good reporting, in a great format, and it was absolutely easy to dig into and read straight through. It was a way better experience than reading it on a Web page, or on a Web browser saved for later on my iPad.

Good for the L.A. Times for getting this released. With a few more tweaks, we could start seeing “must-book-ify” opportunities become “must-reads” and get the attention the writing and narrative are worth.

Reading Gregory Cowles’ review of [Sic], a memoir by the composer Joshua Cody concerning his experience with cancer, chemo, cocaine, destructive relationships and insanity, I was pleasantly struck by two observations—1) that Cowles describes Cody, at 34, as a “young” composer and 2) that Cowles wished, “the book came embedded with MP3s in addition to its photos and paintings and scrap-paper notes.”

With his sympathetic view of multi-media and youth, Cowles is my kind of reviewer — I was about to knock out an MP3 embedded version of [Sic]’s first chapter on Vook to get his attention before realizing that would be inappropriate, having permission from nobody and lacking the will to transcribe a chapter and embed a Cody clip just to show Cowles how quickly we can gild the lilly. Cowles wouldn’t know anyway, unless I video taped the thirty minute process of doing it — which would look more obsessive than impressive.

“Gilding the lilly” isn’t a phrase I should use. ‘Lily gild’ is a grace note, enhancements can be essential. Our tool’s about making great looking eBooks, but when items like Cowles’ appear, or Diana Spiotta talks about film clips that could show up in Stone Arabia or I’m reading I Want My MTV and wondering what they’re talking about, it’s difficult not to think of what could be.

People talk about the expense of enhanced, the time, the uncertainty if reader’s want the additions, but applying the rule of my own experience before we had Vook’s platform, I wonder how much is that it’s difficult. Enhancing eBooks takes time. Enhanced has been getting a poor notice creatively, on the other hand, it’s been too laborious a process and too complicated. There’s uncertainty–is it worth the time it takes to get it right?

I used to edit film. A difference of a few frames could be crucial. One version was right, the other wrong. It made me think of the Platnoic ideal, that information and narrative had a perfect form, like Plato said chairs did. It didn’t seem like subtle editing distinctions would matter, but then they did.

The only way to get film or writing to the right point is to shorten the distance between the creator and what they’re fiddling with. You have to be able to fiddle to the point of getting it acceptably-not-perfect. That can be tricky for the creatives who want to write books and, oh, add enhancements? Sure . . . but they don’t know HTML or how to create an ePub.

So, enter Vook. So, easy audio and video additions. So, my wish that though we’re making a platform to create beautiful straight ebooks, everyone will come looking for what Gregory Cowles is talking about.

And just a note — Cody’s music is hard to locate. I think this video on YouTube for Animal Kingdom (the crime movie, not something Geographical) represents it. Though it does demonstrate Cowles is wrong on one point — the music’s not jazzy, but long and a little mournful. It would be a perfect downbeat counterpoint to a clip of Cody explaining, as he mentions in the book, how to pronounce his name right.

The Vook team — + friends and family — pounded on the Vook platform over the last two days, searching high and low for bugs, defects and sloppy user experiences. This is our second internal attempt at breaking the system and finding ways to improve the product. Yesterday, everyone at Vook created multiple eBooks. Some of the outputs looked awesome, some failed the test and others were near perfect — but not good enough.

We are in that gray zone, trying to answer the big question: when to ship our new product? In my career, this has always been the toughest decision that I have had to make — next to firing good-spiritied employees who do not make the grade.

We are close, but we must solve some gnarly problems, such as making sure the platform can digest weird files with crazy stuff inside that we did not account for. We are throwing every imaginable file at the system — short of notes on paper napkins — in hopes that we can figure out how to handle the buggy stuff that we have not encountered before.

The team is over-worked and exhausted, but they are determined to get it right before we pass off the platform to our patient partners.

I love the Vook team!

Brad Inman

Founder/CEO Vook

We sent an update about Vook to our beta registrants yesterday (hi, all of you!) and the response was overwhellming. People are excited about getting into the platform! And we’re excited to give it to you! I’m getting back to the individual requests today and tomorrow, so I appreciate your patience if you wrote me. If you haven’t heard about what we’re up to, I’ll recap the highlights below.

And if you haven’t joined the Vook beta, go do it now and get in on the world’s best, greatest, most enjoyable, forthcoming easy eBook creation machine.

From the email

Vook helps people easily create exceptional digital books, distribute them to the major marketplaces, and track their sales. Our cloud-based experience allows creators anywhere to access the tool, as well as share files and ideas with other colleagues, authors and partners.

We’ve produced more than 800 eBooks with the battle-tested Vook technology — resulting in 2.5 million downloads. With your content and the Vook platform, you’ll have everything you need to create, store and sell large catalogues of digital masterpieces.

The Vook platform is more than technology — it’s a distinctive production and social experience for eBook creators. Inside the platform, Vook’s “Love & Support” feature provides one click access to a community of people who are immersed in the world of eBook creation, 24/7. The community also offers an extensive library of eBook expertise with hundreds of documents, videos tutorials, sample eBook covers, CSS templates, and links to countless resources to help you along the way.

If technology is about solving problems — Vook delivers.

When we studied the digital market, we discovered publishers were getting the job done, but it was painful and expensive with considerable opportunity costs managing the back and forth with multiple vendors, a range of processes, a variety of technologies and a hodge-podge of reporting inputs. As one publisher said, “We have learned to live with it, but frankly it is a mess”.

Vook’s primary focus is to stop the hassle of creating eBooks. We identified the pain points and are delivering the solution. Here are some of the features and benefits you can expect with Vook:

• Everyone wants an easy way to control quality and better manage their workflow. Improved authoring tools and push button publishing capabilities have become essential. Publishers are hungry for real time QA, and a dashboard to analyze sales and behavior results.

• File conversion is another thorny issue we’ve worked hard to solve. In our new platform, we offer a quick and easy way to import Word and ePub documents, videos, images, and even audio files. Vook converts it all on the fly and enables you to edit the style and formatting.

• We are also introducing an innovative, built-in styling tool allowing publishers to take eBook aesthetics from boring and ordinary to vibrant and extraordinary.

• Real time title rendering lets you see your eBook the way it will look in ePub—allowing you to create and review at the same time, in the same place.

• Ultimately, publishers and authors must sell their eBooks and Vook’s ability to distribute to the major digital marketplaces makes this part a cinch. Vook allows distribution to B&N, Amazon, and the iBookstore.

The vision at Vook from the beginning has been to create better eBooks. We listened and worked with publishers to determine what we needed to do to achieve that vision. We produced hundreds of titles ourselves and with our partners. Then we took all that knowledge and gave it to our awesome product and engineering team to build a one-of-a-kind eBook publishing platform.

Again, sign up for the beta to get in on the special opportunities I only offer in the emails. You can sign up here: http://vook.com

Matthew Cavnar

While listening to an audiobook version of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, our engineer Amanuel was surprised to hear Carr discuss Simon & Schuster’s creation of “vooks”. I’m familiar with Carr’s proposition that the Internet may be dimming our cognition, wrecking our attention span and making us stupid. I hadn’t planned to read the book—like anyone, I don’t want to hear my favorite thing might be bad for me.

But once I found out we were mentioned? To Amazon!

Two things interested me about the book and how it came to my attention. One, I was recommended the title by someone who heard the book in audio form–they didn’t read it or encounter it as text on a page. It’s not the ideal way I think Carr wants his book digested. Reading, particularly deep reading, is key to him. Second, I immediately went and purchased the digital version of The Shallows, opened the book in the Kindle Reader for iPad, searched “vook” with the search function, and rocketed directly to the two references (Location 1829) that we merit.

This is why digital is so great. And this is exactly the kind of thing that drives Carr nuts.

Buying a book about the shallowness of digital culture to then search the name of your own company digitally and zip right to the paragraphs that mention it is such a perfect representation of Carr’s thesis in action that I wish Carr would make an exception for multi-media and include a video in his book of this instance, because, presto — point made.

The second word I searched after “vook” was “Ambrose.” Why? Amanuel’s experience of hearing the book and Carr’s further writing — I read some pages after our namecheck — reminded me of St. Augustine encountering St. Ambrose reading to himself in silence. As Augustine writes in the Confessions, “his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” The encounter seems revelatory for Augustine, and implies that most people at that time read aloud. I’ve always liked that passage — to me it represents the moment when one of my favorite activities – ie, quiet reading that blocks out the world — made its first, or at least most eloquently recorded, appearance.

I like that we’re referenced in a book about the shallowness of the Internet, but I relish the irony that in my own life, at least, the digital age, in fact, my experiences at Vook itself, have only pulled me further away from the short attention span theatre of movies, television etc, and plunged me so far into books that it’s a cause of lament for those close to me. It’s worse with my father, who often maneuvers around his kitchen with an iPhone held in front of him, reading novel after novel.

What’s my point? That I’m glad I read some of this book. I think I can assure Carr. Digital may become “a recording of chatter”, but it’s always going to be a recording of the exceptional too. What do I, Augustine, Amanuel, my father, and Ambrose have in common? We want to escape into a book. We want to get out of this world. Technology is only making the avenue of escape more immediately available. Carr shouldn’t be concerned that the computer’s “ecology of interruption technologies” is going to spaz us out, he should instead detail how its capacity to enchant at the drop of a hat is going to create a society of iOS enabled Byzantine recluses.

I can imagine Augustine if he’d chanced on Ambrose with a temporally displaced iPad, “his finger sought out the meaning of the page, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. And his heart was at peace!”

Matthew Cavnar