N.Y. Publisher Releases Deveraux Novel as Video Book

The latest novel from best-selling romance author Jude Deveraux isn’t exactly a book. “Promises” is a reading and viewing experience, a digital text in which videos not only complement the narrative but add to it.

“Promises” is one of four online video books being published Thursday by Simon & Schuster Inc. in collaboration with Vook, an Emeryville, Calif.-based startup that integrates text, video and social networking.

Deveraux’s novel, a romance-mystery set on a 19th-century South Carolina plantation, runs 131 pages, punctuated with 17 short videos, including images of the plantation and of a young soldier running through the woods, Simon & Schuster says.

“This is not a substitute for print, but we see the role of the publisher changing from being a book publisher only to offering different ways to tell stories and convey ideas,” says Ellie Hirschhorn, chief digital officer of New York-based Simon & Schuster, which is releasing the video texts through its Atria Books imprint.

Also coming out Thursday are Richard Doetsch’s thriller “Embassy” and a pair of nonfiction works: Pete Cerqua’s “The 90-Second Fitness Solution” and Narine Nikogosian’s “Return to Beauty,” which offers advice on skin care and diet.

For centuries, the essence of the reading experience has been the mind creating its own pictures, but bringing books and videos together has become attractive, if not yet lucrative, to publishers as book sales suffer and reading shifts from paper to the screen.

Vook founder Brad Inman said Internet video exists throughout the news and entertainment businesses and it would be “arrogant to think that publishing is exempt.”

Disney Publishing, Scholastic Inc. and the Perseus Book Group are some of the publishers experimenting with multiplatform texts, which combine words, audio, video and Internet links. Promotional videos and online video interviews have become increasingly common. The impact on sales is still undetermined, but Randy Pausch’s…