Read my earlier posts about the potential of ebooks:
I look forward to authors exploring the ebook format as something more than just a different package for print books. Ebooks are a format, distinct from print, and can do things that print can’t, tell stories in ways that print could never accomplish.
It’s more than the obvious idea of integrating multimedia elements (but how cool would Rigg’s “Peculiar Children” books be if the images were subtle animated GIFs?). Ebooks aren’t ink on paper, which means the text doesn’t have to be permanent. The words themselves could be made changeable.
I’ve already explored some ideas for time travel stories, a “Choose Your Own Adventure” in reverse.
Consider the potential for unreliable narrator stories, where what the character says literally changes as you read it.
Multiple narrator stories: You come to page, with all the text already there, but then new text pops up as you’re reading, physically intruding itself into the preexisting narrative, new voices telling you a different version of events.
Something more subtle, a “Berenstein / Berenstain” effect: A character’s name changes partway through, but when the reader looks back to confirm that they were originally called something different, their name has been changed everywhere so the reader can’t be certain.
Random words which change randomly. Sentences where multiple words would work equally well, and they all cycle through, each word changing into the next as you watch. Passages which morph their meaning and the words morph into different versions.
Imagine all you could do when the text itself can be rendered changeable.
John the Librarian 