Publisher Simon & Schuster UK is launching its first combined eBook and audiobook this month with the release of Phillppa Gregory’s best-selling historical novel The Red Queen on the App Store.

Enhanced Editions, the London-based digital publisher behind the Bunny Munro and Wolf Hall iPhone apps, has announced a partnership with AudioGO (previously BBC Audiobooks) to produce enhanced versions of landmark titles and best-sellers from the BBC Archive.

It was a sharp reminder that while a section of the publishing industry steams ahead with revised (and revised again) digital publishing strategies, there are still many smaller publishers who haven’t even started thinking yet about how they will adapt to this market.

One of the many great debates around the ephemeralisation of music has been the lamentations for the loss of cover art: now, we are reaching the same point with books.

Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker is the story of 26 stolen letters. The free iPhone sampler app contains the first of the missing letters from the book, as text and synchronised audio.

There are two questions that keep coming up whenever I talk to people about the future of publishing: • What more »

Peter Collingridge is MD of Apt Studio, a digital consultancy specialising in publishing, and co-founder of Enhanced Editions, a digital more »

Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro iPhone app includes the full ebook, the unabridged audiobook synchronised to the text, read by the author with an original soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and 11 videos of Cave reading from the novel.

The App contains the full text of The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ, which has been synchronised to the unabridged audiobook read by Philip Pullman – enabling users to switch between reading and listening to the book – plus a number of multimedia extras and exclusives.

It may have escaped your notice that in March 2010 Anne Rice announced the launch of her inaugural ‘vook’, that’s more »