Thursday, July 19, 2012

Reading Fifty Shades of Grey in 2013.

Or, "I just bought a hand-crafted Italian leather ball gag for $19.99."

I wonder what ebooks, or as some of you call the, books, will be like next year.  Many books are being published as apps, with added content such as music, video, annotations, games, etc.

But many apps also include "in app purchasing" where the app delivers more and more content if you pay more money.

Like games for your phone or tablet:  If you want the basic game, you download it for free or for a buck.  Then if you want to actually enjoy the game because the free version sucks, you'll have to pay more money to buy the items you'll need to complete the harder parts.

So if you combine the power to purchase added items with the "book as app" model, you'll get books where you can purchase the items the characters are using right there while you're reading the book.  So you can get that ball gag the stud is strapping to the heroine's face.  Or the dildo she's jamming into him.  Or the champagne or the car or the dress or the music or the .... the list is endless.  In app purchasing for ebooks could become bigger than 2 am infomercials for shitty overpriced exercise equipment.

You could pay to read the even dirtier scenes the author left out of the regular edition.  You could add sound effects each time the whip cracks in the air then licks across the heroine's taught eager ass.

You could pay for images, photos created for the book featuring beautiful models caught at the precise moment of exquisite pain.  Or pay to insert your own photos into the story.  Or change the character's names to match yours.  Or use the names of the 2013 President and First Lady: oooh, naughty.

I don't know what books will be like in a year.  But I can damn well guarantee that if in-app purchases in ebooks become common, more than a few of you will say, "Shit, this book just sold me another dildo. Someone's getting it for Christmas. Maybe grandma?"

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