Most E-books, such as Stephen King's latest, use Adobe Acrobat and HTML formatting and consist of a single story. But a new E-book titled "Beautiful Enemy" lets readers pick the names of the four main characters and choose between two directions the story can take. Users also can choose from three available languages: English, Hindi, and Telugu.
The E-book, written by G.V. Amareswara Rao, remembers the page the user was reading before logging off the site and provides a link to return to the story once the user logs back on.
HamaraShehar.com is one of several Websites that has beefed up its E-book initiatives in recent months, but analysts say there isn't much consumer value in them unless they're marketing globally renowned authors such as King. "The Stephen King E-novel is the mack daddy of all E-books," says Robert Labatt research director at Gartner Group. "Although G.V. Amareswara Rao may have a huge following among the Hindi community, I don't think it's a popular brand name to the masses, and, as a result, it will have limited reach." Major publishers will continue to play a huge role in novels published online, he says. Still, he believes HamarShehar.com's idea of publishing an interactive novel online is interesting and will drive additional traffic to the company's Website.
"Beautiful Enemy" is available now and will run for 20 weeks with a new chapter published weekly. After 20 weeks, users can request a free copy of the completed novel. The company plans to publish additional novels online.
