‘Look to the past to see a possible future’. That’s what it said in my fortune cookie - so that’s what I’m doing.

The thing that has surprised me so far in the marketing of ebooks is how little innovative thinking there has been.

“Look everyone! The iPad has been released! We can now publish things in colour…”

While I don’t doubt that there will be innovation due to the iPad, I still see very little new innovation in the e-ink market. Even with something that started many decades ago…

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…I’m going to whisk you back now - back in time to the days when Wagon wheels were larger, kids rode Chopper bikes and the head of MI5 was a singing, dancing child actor.

In those days books were something that you read. You started at the beginning and finished at the end and that was that.

If you were a proto-geek you’d find a copy of ‘Little wars’ by H.G Wells and re-enact some of the battle scenes from Lord of the Rings.

Then, in the 70’s and 80’s a new type of book arrived on the market.

The gamebook.

These were ‘choose your own adventure’ books. Often aimed at children, they would enable you to choose the path that the hero took through the book. An example paragraph might read,

You are creeping down the corridor when you come across a sleeping goblin guard. Resting back in his chair a large money pouch dangling from his belt makes an enticing target.

If you try to sneak past turn to paragraph 236.

If you try to steal the pouch without waking the goblin turn to paragraph 17.

You would then read through the book with success or failure depending on they choices that you made.

Additional game mechanics would be provided by dice rolls against these hypothetical monsters.

While these books were often aimed at children there were some efforts to make educational and adult versions of these books. However, by the end of the 80’s with the explosion of computer games these books became less popular.

It was a little while ago that I came across Being Elizabeth Bennet: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure a ‘choose your own adventure’ book for adults. Aimed, no doubt, at adult women, pretty much as far from the original demographic as you can get.

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The American ‘Choose your own adventure’ books have received Kindle releases, thankfully the technology has been fully embraced and now, instead of flipping through the pages looking for the right paragraph, you just click on the link describing your action.

While the Americans may have published their gamebooks, the much more British Fighting Fantasy books haven’t been published for e-ink screens.

Yet.

However the first of the series is available for the iPhone and as a child of the *cough* seventies - I look forward to a more being released. Perhaps it might encourage some of the Harry Potter generation to get into gaming, and maybe persuade those children who think that Harry Potter is ‘soft’ to slick the blades of their axes with Orc blood.

Perhaps the ebook format is a way to reopen the market for new gamebooks. Surely there isn't a publisher on the planet that hasn't agonised on how to get a piece of the Twilight romantic vampire fiction market?

And what better way than to have a gamebook that asks if you want to stay with the stalker or the wife beater?