Book News
“Pillars” goes multimedia.
The latest in the new, electronic world of book publishing: The Amplified Edition.
Penguin Group (USA) and Starz Entertainment have collaborated on an Amplified version of Ken Follett’s blockbuster “The Pillars of the Earth,” featuring video and audio. The e-release, available on Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod, is timed to Starz’s eight-part, eight-hour miniseries based on Follett’s historical epic. The first episode aired July 23, with seven more installments throughout the summer.
The Penguin-Starz project combines the full text of the book with extensive excerpts from the TV production, added weekly as the miniseries progresses. Also included are interviews with the author, sketches of the set, selections from the soundtrack and a family tree that offers background on the various characters and videos of the actors discussing their roles.
Penguin and numerous other publishers have created multimedia projects in recent years as they seek to find new and bigger audiences online.
An Emeryville, Calif.-based company, Vook, has created video books, combining text and film clips, out of everything from fitness guides to a collection of stories by Franz Kafka.
Penguin is planning other Amplified works, fiction and nonfiction, but a spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Associated Press
First Lines
In the Name of Honor, by Richard North Patterson
The phone call awakened Paul Terry from the dream of his father.
Disoriented, he sat up in bed, staring at the wall of the hotel room. In the dream, he was thirteen, the age at which the image had first come to him. His father had just died; reappearing in Paul’s sleep, Frank Terry assured his son that he was fine, just living in a different place. Relieved, Paul would awaken, and then feel more abandoned and alone. Even now, at thirty-one, the dream left tears in Paul’s eyes.
His cellphone rasped again. Beside him, Jenny stirred. Groping, he found the phone on a nightstand and flipped it open.
“Captain Terry,” he said in a sleep-stunned voice.
“Paul. It’s Colonel Dawes.”
“Morning, sir.” Glancing at the drawn curtains, he detected no light. “Is it morning?”
“Six a.m. Where are you?”
“D.C. I’m spending the weekend here.”
“Not anymore, I’m afraid.” Dawes’s southern- tinged voice was soft. “I guess you haven’t seen the papers. There’s been a shooting on the post. A captain’s dead.”
Terry tried to process this. “Are they preferring charges?”
“Not yet.” The colonel’s voice lowered. “The shooter is Lieutenant Brian McCarran.”
Terry was instantly alert. “The general’s son?”
Mass Market Paperback Best Sellers
1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
2. The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson
3. McKettricks of Texas: Austin, by Linda Lael Miller
4. Love in the Afternoon, by Lisa Kleypas
5. Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, by Janet Evanovich
6. Knockout, by Catherine Coulter
7. The Darkest Lie, by Gena Showalter
8. The Brazen Bride, by Stephanie Laurens
9. The Neighbor, by Lisa Gardner
10. The Lucky One, by Nicholas Sparks
Publishers Weekly
