Amazon Publishing has created an animated cover for its listing of Patricia Cornwell’s Quantum.
The book description includes the following:
Kindle in Motion
This book can be read on any device, including Kindle E-readers. It may include art, animation, or video features that can be viewed on certain Fire tablets and the free Kindle app for iOS and Android. You can switch features on or off at any time.
Here’s a link to the book page for Quantum and here’s a link to other examples of Kindle in Motion.
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I think it’s great for grabbing potential reader attention as long as it’s not overly flashy and could trigger an epileptic seizure.
I can make these fairly easily, but I can’t figure out how my clients can get them upoaded with their ebook in place of the standard cover.
I did this in just a few minutes to one of the covers I designed for Lesley Smith. https://glitterboo.com/output/d61225ba54-out.mp4
When I go to the actual Amazon page, the book does absolutely nothing. Am I the only one who sees nothing? The background of the page looks like space with stars etc. But the book cover isn’t moving. The one lower down the page moves, but not the normal cover at the top.
Sorry you’re having problems, Lynette.
Online at Amazon, the Patricia Cornwell cover at the top of the listing is an mp4 file, while the Kindle in Motion examples farther down in the listing are animated gif files.
Some browsers have an option setting that disables the autoplaying of videos, so perhaps that’s what is happening to you.
Oh, yes, that was it. I opened it in Edge and it works. I’m sure at some point I set my browser not to auto play videos, because it drives me crazy. 🙂
Anyhow, Meh… I’m not sure this would convince me to buy the book.
Why?
I could hypothetically imagine a case where an animated book cover might be effective, but this definitely isn’t it. The “sunrise” effect doesn’t do much for me, and the spinning letters in the author name make me dizzy. Overall, I think I’m less likely to buy this book with the animated cover than the regular one.
I concur.
The motion on the cover does nothing for me.
However, I see the usefulness in maps or processes from MKS’s post.
I can imagine that action scenes might attract attention.
Internally – oh, yes. Dynamic maps of battles, etc.
The big thing internally, though, would be interactive clips that can be rotated by the reader (like many of the product pages that you see on many sites these days). But that could blur the line between reading and video games, I suppose.
Ew. No.
“Animated (some type of book) Cover”
Shades of Harry Potter!
Sorry, but those moving ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ punch the monkey ads turn me off. (and that’s what it’s going to turn into once the advertisers see them …)
Didn’t Joe Konrath use an animated cover about a hundred years ago?
And didn’t Joe Konrath design a great model for libraries to purchase his eBooks?
And didn’t Joe Konrath write the best John Rain story, ever.
Sorry. Fell into a Konrath Vortex for a moment.
Dan
Kindle In Motion has potential, but I was underwhelmed by the implementation I read. It was Patricia Cornwell’s Jack the Ripper book, and the motion feature was just decorative movement in some illustrations. Total waste to be honest; it could be a useful feature for animating maps in history books or demonstrating process steps in technical books. Plus, if there’s one thing a publisher can do with a True Crime book to creep me out as a reader it’s to make it pretty.
Note to Ripperologists: Cornwell’s books are not recommended. I can only assume that there’s some kind of Kindle in Motion vanity deal with her.