Category Archives: Review

Riding the iBook Wave

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Well, Everest: High Expectations has been available on the world’s 50 iTunes stores for a few weeks now. It seems odd that I can sit here in my backwoods office — tethered to the rest of the world by a small internet satellite dish — and watch the iBooks’ first tentative steps onto the international scene without even going outside.

Everest is slowly attracting the attention of readers and the mountaineering publishing world. We’ve had a lot of enthusiastic reviews posted on the American and Canadian iTunes sites and received many more as emails. I’ve met some new people through the book (notably editor, writer and mountaineer John Harlin) and exchanged emails with folks in Turkey, New Zealand, England, Russia and Georgia. Our first full-length review comes from the mountain town of Whistler, B.C. — The Pique’s Lynn Martel shows that she understands Everest’s 3-dimensional nature. You can read it here.

Many are drawn to the Everest adventure story but some are just as excited about Continue reading →

A Welcome Review

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John Harlin IIII’m feeling a bit starstruck today after an incredibly complimentary note from John Harlin III. A member of the Harlin climbing dynasty, John is author of the Eiger Obsession: Facing the Mountain That Killed my Father, star of the Imax film, The Alps (about his own Eiger ascent) and recently retired editor of the American Alpine Journal.

Thank you John. These are generous words and I’m delighted that you share my vision of the future of illustrated books. I mean, coffee tablet books. (Rather than wait for a review copy, John bought the very first copy on iTunes two weeks ago.)

Everest: High Expectations, by Pat Morrow and Sharon Wood, is at the vanguard of the new wave in publishing. It’s an iPad-only book about two milestone Canadian expeditions to Everest in the 1980s. One journey takes Pat Morrow to the summit after four people died early in the expedition. The other is Sharon Wood’s struggle for the top via a new route with no Sherpa support… Both of these stories are historically important and superbly written.
 
… this is the first mountain book to fully utilize the incredible new iBooksAuthor system from Apple, which helps authors create multi-media “coffee tablet books.” I think it’s brilliant. It brings a book to life like never before, including slideshows, video, and sound clips. And yet the design follows the aesthetic tradition of a photo-heavy book that you’d proudly display on your coffee table. So it’s a “coffee tablet” book.
 
I’m convinced that growth in publishing will be in tablets and I recommend this book for two reasons:
1) these are gripping good tales that are gorgeous to look at, and
2) this book is making history, as perhaps the very first climbing book designed specifically for today’s most exciting medium.