Not something I'm considering doing, just wondering: I have music and my ebooks on Kindle fire and I couldn't help but wonder if some time in the near future there will be deluxe editions of ebooks with soundtracks included that could be downloaded. It would be a nice little perk, with a track for each chapter. I wonder if anybody else has thought of this. Granted, probably only bestsellers would do it but still, it would be an awesome bonus...I could easily imagine some eery ambient music with a Lovecraft style novel.
an intriguing concept... don't know if i'd like to read to music, though. so if you can do it someday, be sure to make it optional...
Sure, why not? It's been done a couple of times before - I remember there was a book/album joint-release last year, where they were meant to make up one overall work, though I'm damned if I can remember the name. I think wolves were involved. Trying to find it turned up Monocyte, which is an indie graphic novel with accompanying soundtrack. Still hardly common, though, and a fun concept.
This is an interesting idea. I have a blog, with optional music attached. I think it definitely adds a dimension to your work. The blog is designed so readers don't have the music forced on them, but can choose whether to play it or not. I decided on that option, because some websites I go on throw music at me and give me no choice, and that can be a bit off-putting sometimes.
It is already possible. Most of the current formats could support something of this nature. However I'm of the opinion that many of the eBook enhancements really are distractions from the story (for fiction). Embedded media is more likely to take you out of the story, than to immerse you in it.
I can't see it working, because how fast the customer reads is unpredictable, so the music can't be eyed to the mood of the action, meaningfully. It might be playing chase music while the reader is still having breakfast with the protagonist. Remember, a chapter isn't a scene. It could be part of one or contain several. And since scenes have rising tension throughout it's impossible to key the music to the reading in the way a film can.
I had pondered about that question for some time and then given up on it as I am writing to pre-existent music and would never be able to sort out the copyright issues (not to mention a price to cover the proceedings). From the technical point of view it is feasible. I do not know whether anything like that is available for Kindle, but at the "iBooks Store" you can get Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" for free as a so called "enhanced version" which includes "LibriVox" recordings of volunteers reading out the text for each chapter. As to the notion of chapters vs. scenes: A book might be edited to fit the needs of a soundtrack, like being cut to shorter scenes so that an ambient loop might fit a whole scene. That might even be a nice layout for an ebook + audiobook for language learners which instead of having heaped whole chapters on them could do much better with six or seven lines per track.
I also believe that a download fee is charged by most ebook providers (Amazon, for example) and the larger the file, the larger the fee. It (inclusion of music) would cut into profits, or require a higher retail price. Also, obtaining the rights for music or having original compositions would be costly as well, again, increasing the necessary retail price for the book to be viable.
Good points by all so far. And, to add to the discussion, I'm not sure it would actually sell that well. Many people don't like reading whilst listening to music. Personally, I hate it.
I find that a very intriguing idea indeed. I love to read to classical music, and have found even dull textbooks come to life with a 'soundtrack'. However, you'd need to be cautious, because not everybody is going to react to certain kinds of music the same way. And as @JayG says, to have it as an actual soundtrack, you'd have to be sure that everybody is going to be reading at the same pace. A movie is different because everybody IS watching at the same pace, so a soundtrack works. However, I do think this is an idea worth thinking about. Certainly the technology is already available to a certain extent. Might be a lot of fun! Certainly if your book is ABOUT music, or has characters in it who play music, etc, it might enhance the experience a lot to be able to hear what your characters are playing or listening to.
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