Greetings Vook Fans,

I am really excited here in Vook New York City as I start gearing up for Digital Book 2011 and Book Expo America — the largest publishing trade show in North America — next week down the street at the Javits Convention Center, which is guaranteed to be a great time. Don’t be shy and make sure you stop by Kiosk 2311 in the Digital Zone to say “hi” and pick up some special download cards from me. Also, you’ll want to follow my live Tweeting by reading the @vooktv stream.

Be sure to mark your calendars to check out our Vook speakers at the conferences:

Monday, May 23
Digital Book 2011 at the Javits Convention Center
Rooms 1e02-04
4:30 – 5:15 pm
The Future of Digital Reading and the Business of Digital Publishing

Vook founder and CEO Brad Inman will be speaking on a panel along with Peter Balis of John Wiley & Sons and Masaaki Hagino and Daihei Shiohama of Voyager Japan.

About: Interactivity and rich-media enhanced eBooks are increasingly expected. Social reading and transmedia “storytelling” are emerging trends. Borders between books and periodicals are breaking down as content gets liberated from the constraints of traditional packagings. What are the business implications?

---

Wednesday, May 25
Book Expo America at the Javits Convention Center
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm
IDPF Digital Stage
Matthew Cavnar, Head of Product Development at Vook, will be discussing the scalable creation of digital content, distribution to multiple marketplaces and how technology platforms can solve the problems publishers face in digital today.

See you next week,

Jules
Social Media Marketing Manager
jules@vook.tv

Today, Seth Godin announced that his newest Vook, Linchpin, is available as an iPad app, and on sale in the iTunes store. He also noted the challenges of promoting a book in the store when there are so many apps:

There are more than 24,000 apps listed in the iPad store, and yet the front window (equivalent to the window of a bookstore) shows the user six choices. The spotlight coverflow up top shows another sixteen, fairly randomly. Meaning there’s a little worse than a one in a thousand chance that your app will appear in front of someone interacting with the store at the first level.

Seth advocates that authors become the “gatekeeper” of their own content. They can’t rely on iTunes store promotions; it’s their job to reach out to their users. Social media and user engagement will dictate how purchases are made, just as they dictate the content that is consumed on the Web.

There are also apps that help you search for apps, such as Chomp. The Chomp iPhone app serves as a search engine for the iPhone app store that includes user reviews. It blends search, social media and shopping all into one.

There may be problems with iTunes store model, but there are also talented people ready to develop solutions.