What's next?

I was catching up on my blog-reading and two entries especially caught my eye.

One was about Harlequin's "enriched editions" on the TOC blog.

Unmasked ... has been enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites containing photos, historical commentaries, illustrations, sound effects, maps, articles and more ... The interactive buttons have been designed to be unobtrusive, so if one prefers not to access the bonus material, the reading experience remains uninterrupted.

I can't say as this surprised me, since it's been discussed at industry forum and is the next logical step for e-books. The next probably will be options such as posting notes and questions to groups, e-mailing reviews to websites, maybe even chatting with other readers. Who knows where e-books can go once you connect them to the World Wide Web.

The other entry was on Joe Wikert's blog about DailyLit. DailyLit, as the name implies, allows you to sign up for "daily" chunks of books delivered directly to your in-box. As Joe blogged, this is a cool idea and a great way to learn on the go. So I checked out the website, was about to sign up...then I stopped.

Although I still carry around a book with me wherever I go, I rarely pick it up during the week since I'm trying to stay on top of e-mail and blog-reading, thanks to my BlackBerry, while commuting. So why, after spending too much time staring at a screen at work, then spending most of my time to and from work staring at my BlackBerry screen, would I want to read a book on it? That's why I haven't even contemplated buying a Kindle, and that would be way more eye-friendly than this.

But maybe it's just me. Although I appreciate where the industry is going and think it should offer the reader all platforms to choose from, I just think getting more e-mail is not the answer. Check it out and let me know what you think.