What is an interactive ebook?

01Three meanings, side by side

02Digital picture books

Children's interactive books started on paper, with flaps, textures and pop-ups, and moved onto screens as apps and ebooks with narration and sounds. Our page on interactive books for kids covers that meaning.

03Social and annotated ebooks

Fable uses the phrase most directly. Its App Store listing describes "EBOOKS DESIGNED FOR INTERACTIVE READING" inside its own reader, where you can "Annotate books with highlights, notes, tabs, comments, and reactions right inside the book" and "Respond to discussion prompts embedded inside the book", and it says it has a catalog "of over one million interactive ebooks". Here the interaction is with other readers and with your own notes.

04Enhanced editions

"Enhanced ebook" is an older industry term for editions with extra material. The Authors Guild uses it when it argues that Kindle's Ask this Book "turns books into searchable, interactive products akin to enhanced ebooks or annotated editions", which it calls "a new format for which rights should be specifically negotiated". That argument is set out in Are AI reading companions fair to authors?

05Ebooks with built-in AI

Kindle's AI features turn supported ebooks into books you can question. Ask this Book answers questions about "plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements", up to your reading position by default, and Story So Far gives a recap up to where you stopped. These are US features for supported Kindle ebooks; see the Kindle profile.

06Can a print book or audiobook be interactive?

Not on its own, but a separate app can add interaction. Magic Bookmark works alongside a print book, ebook or audiobook copy of supported titles: you show it your page, and it gives a recap, cast list, answers and character chat up to that point. Thus Far adds chapter-locked discussion to any format. The full list is in the comparison table.