In July of 2008, about nine months after the first season of Mad Men ended, Lionsgate, the hit television show’s producer, released the DVD. It not only carried all 13 episodes but a number of special features as well. Among them were audio commentaries on each episode; a “featurette” exploring the world of Mad Men; a documentary called The Desire of the American Dream, described as “featuring the 1960′s creative revolution in media”; “Pictures of Elegance” a photo gallery with commentaries from the costume, hair and production designers; another featurette called “Scoring Mad Men“; and a Mad Men Music Sampler.

Some leading publishing executives must have watched that or some other DVD and had an “Aha!” moment. Why couldn’t you enhance e-book reprints the same way that film and television studios enhance the DVD rereleases of theatrical movies or television series?

That idea seems to be taking hold. Jack McKeown, a founder of book publisher and distributor Perseus Group, recently discussed this idea, citing remarks by HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray: “Publishers would do well to seize the high ground here by offering enhanced e-book editions, accompanied by robust internet-focused marketing campaigns to further distinguish their e-book launches.”

And Jeffrey Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal reports that Macmillan will be releasing special e-book editions of key hardcover books, but with an interesting twist: they will actually be sold for a higher price than the hardcovers! “The special editions, which will include author interviews and other material, such as reading guides, will carry a list price slightly higher than the hardcover edition. (Hardcover books typically list for at least $25, while e-book versions of best sellers can go for as little as $9.99.) The new e-books will go on sale on the same day as the hardcover. After 90 days, the special edition will be replaced by a standard e-book.”

It should come as no surprise that the idea for enhanced e-books was introduced, or at least articulated, last March by Mike Shatzkin, the closest thing our business has to a Nostradumus. In a two part posting he laid out everything a publisher needs to know and do to maximize its e-book resources.

One of the key benefits of the medium is economy. Enhanced e-books “present the opportunity to deliver additional content and features to consumers with no additional run-on production cost,” Shatzkin explains. “Traditional printed books cost something additional for every extra page we put into them; e-books don’t.

“An enhanced ebook,” he points out, “can be an infinite number of things, and probably will become dozens, if not hundreds, of different things over time…The tools include internal linking, external linking, embedded video and audio, additional text-and-illustration content, and even software utilities.” You can read details in Part 1 and Part 2 of Shatzkin’s oracular posts.

By glamorizing their e-book reprints with author interviews, special prefaces by guests or by the authors themselves, audios and videos, previews of the author’s new book, etc., publishers will go far to pacify complaints by fans irritated about having to wait. (See Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Reprints.)

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the Wall Street Journal.

Kassia Krozser, whose Booksquare blog (in her own words) “dissects the publishing industry with love and skepticism,” has dissected Nat Sobel’s plea to publishers to withhold e-book reprints of hardcovers, and she bluntly declares “You are wrong.”

In a two-part posting, Responding to Nat Sobel, Cranky-Style, she amplifies on her judgment. Sobel’s statement was originally published on the E-Reads website and has provoked such publishers as Hachette, Simon & Schuster and Harper to declare that they will delay e-book reprints for months after publication of hardcovers. You can read about those policy announcements here.

Sobel and his partner Judith Weber have individually replied to Krozser in comments on her website. Says Sobel: “The economy of all publishing is at stake here for both publisher, agent and author. Keeping hardcover books alive [we are the only country in the world with a viable hardcover market] is essential to the intellectual health of this country.” He adds: “I love electronic books. I have a Kindle. And use it. The story behind all of this is fear of survival.”

Judith Weber draws a parallel to DVDs of motion pictures:

These comments seem to ignore the fact that Mr. Sobel never suggested that books not be released in electronic format, only that their release be delayed beyond the period of the initial hardcover release. When the mass market paperback business was thriving, millions of readers waited to buy books when they came out (usually a year later than hardcover release), but they didn’t refuse to buy the books they wanted to read. If readers today don’t want to pay the higher price of hardcovers, they will, similarly, wait a few months until the books are available electronically, or a little longer until they can find them in paperback reprint. To cite the movie analogy again, many people wait until DVDs are released, rather than paying the high cost of a night out at the movies, but they still see the movies they want to see.

You can read their remarks in full, plus many more incisive comments, on Booksquare here.

Whichever side of the argument you take, we all passionately agree that this is about the future of the book business and the survival of authors.

Richard Curtis

Literary agent Nat Sobel, one of the most respected figures in his field, has issued an appeal to book industry leaders urging them to resist the temptation to release e-book reprints of hardcover books too early. Noting with alarm that movie exhibitors had recently pulled a film after learning that an early release of the DVD had been scheduled, Sobel draws the analogy with booksellers whose hardcover sales are cannibalized by early release of e-book editions.