Dracula has risen again … this time as an interactive horror tale.
A new version of Bram Stoker’s vampire classic is poised to emerge on the Apple iPad next week ($4.99). Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition is a Halloween surprise that mixes words, music and video-game-like features.
Count this as just the latest evolutionary word in the expanding e-book category, which already captures about 8 percent of book sales. With its larger, full-color touch-sensitive screen, Apple’s iPad could cast an even more compelling spell than standard e-readers.
“It really is a different kind of reading experience,” says Jeffrey Schechter of Padworx Digital Media, which created the new Dracula. “Because it is built on a game engine, not only can we do everything other interactive books can do, but we can also bring in 3-D graphics and game-play elements.”
There’s plenty in Dracula for readers to sink their teeth into. In addition to nearly all of the original novel (about 300 pages), the cutting-edge application contains interactive versions of journals, notes and maps. Also hidden in the application: the entire 1922 film Nosferatu, an unauthorized film version of the Dracula story directed by F.W. Murnau, and an Orson Welles radio adaptation, as well as Stoker’s death certificate (added after the family approved of the product).
Beyond the mood music, the enhanced book app has 21 independent rock songs that complement chapters, a move “to appeal to the Twilight, True Blood and Vampire Diaries generation,” Schechter says.
Consumers are embracing digital reading in many forms. Already, about 4 million U.S. homes have an e-book reader such as Amazon’s Kindle, and Forrester Research projects sales of more than 29 million by 2015. But the research firm expects the iPad and other eventual tablet PC product sales to catch e-readers late next year.
“E-readers are very good at linear content,…