Could This Be The Future of Books?

With eBooks sales skyrocketing every year thanks to Amazon's Kindle and the Tablet craze, one can only ask, what's next?

I've written about this before: how print books will fade away and the majority will adopt the eBook format. Especially since you can get an eReader for $79 or a tablet for $199, both from Amazon. It's inevitable, just like how DVD made the VHS tape extinct, CD's made cassettes extinct and how smartphones are making standard cellphones extinct.

Last year, 60% of iPad owners used their tablet for reading. That percentage will get bigger thanks to Apple's latest iPad, which sold three million units in its first three days, and its new Retina Display (the highest resolution screen for any mobile device ever) which will make reading easier and sharper.

Right now authors can implement all sorts of media into their eBooks, like audio clips, video clips, high resolution pictures, which ultimately make a book more interactive with the user.

But what's the next step?

Enter: Coliloquy, a publisher on the Kindle that plans on taking reading to the next level.

For those of you that grew with Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks, will find Coliloquy very similar. The difference being that they will be doing it in a digital format and mostly for Young Adult and Romance novels.

Coliloquy calls this Active Fiction, where the reader, not the author, makes choices on what will happen next in the story. This would keep the reader coming back for more to see how different choices will effect the outcome of the story.  One of Coliloquy's titles, Fluid claims that it has over 500 possible pathways for a reader to choose from, that can influence the way characters in the story react with each other.

For now, Coliloquy has six titles available on Amazon and cost under $6.99. These books are sold as applications, not as static mobi. files.

A few publishing companies tried this form of storytelling in the nineties, but it failed to catch on. Nowadays, thanks to affordable technology, this could make a comeback, especially in the genres Coliloquy are publishing. Depending on its success, it could expand to other genres, allowing writers to experiment with their stories.

In the future, will Active Fiction be the new form of storytelling or will it become another forgettable fad?