Facebook acquires Push Pop Press: bad news for publishers?
(Read article summary)Publishing industry experts rue the (temporary, anyway) disappearance of a promising new form of e-book innovation.
What’s good for Facebook isn’t necessarily good for books. That’s the reaction of folks in the media and tech worlds regarding Facebook’s latest acquisition.
Push Pop Press, an e-publishing startup founded by two ex-Apple engineers, announced Tuesday that it was being acquired by Facebook.
The idea behind Push Pop is brilliant, and a godsend for a publishing industry sorely in need of innovative ideas. It sought to create a “publishing platform for authors, publishers, and artists to turn their books into interactive iPad or iPhone apps – no programming skills required,” according to Wired.com’s Brian Chen. Push Pop published innovative multimedia e-books – think books that “read” like movies, with interactive graphics and words mingling across the page – for Apple’s iPad and iPhone, including Al Gore’s “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.”
