The Ukraine-based startup Cine-Books, founded in 2013, was first described as “something between traditional books and movies.” The company produces an audio and video rendition of a book in which the text is read by a narrator and costumed actors are recorded in standard green-screen technique in tableaux representing scenes from the book.
How many words is a picture worth? A lot, in this case. Have a look at the trailer for the company’s rendition of HP Lovecraft’s story “Hypnos,” and you’ll get the idea immediately. Lots of moving scenes, plenty of pans and zooms. This is time-consuming work, and considering its use of actors as well as technicians, you can understand why it makes sense to keep costs down with a two-character story like “Hypnos.”
The company made an appearance at BookExpo in New York in 2014, then became quiet.Late this year, Cine-Books made a reappearance (with offices in Cyprus), and exhibited at Frankfurt Book Fair with what was announced as a dozen titles in the public domain, but most are still in process. We’ve spoken with the company’s Anastasiya Manina, who tells us, “Twelve titles have been produced. Now, we have five ready, and at the end of 2017, we’ll release ‘To Build a Fire’ by Jack London. Two more titles are at the final stage of post-production,” and others are at varying stages of preparation.Cine-Books is now in search of writers who would like to see their work given this tableau vivant treatment. The company has both royalty-based and “mixed” funding in mind. The mixed option includes funding from the rights holder (that would be the author), as well as from donors and Cine-Books. Crowdfunding, we’re told, will make it possible for some projects to move forward with the support of the “Cine-Books community of readers.”
Bottom line: The problem, of course, is that there’s no evidence of a Cine-Books community of readers to fund the daunting work behind these kinds of multimedia efforts. Producing a Cine-Book is so labor intensive that CEO Oleg Fonarov told Molly Flatt at the Bookseller’s FutureBook conference that they’ve worked so far only with titles under 100 pages. Then there’s the problem of how to market and sell such work. If you had an edition of your book rendered in this loving, ornate format, how would you market it? While Fonarov and his company are friendly and earnest, their approach appears to be unwieldy.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
