Well, well, well.

Just when we were thinking that Anne Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles and other bestselling novels, might be seriously considering bringing out her next book as a Kindle exclusive, she’s thrown us a bit of a curveball with the announcement by her literary agency that she’ll be releasing, through Vook, a multimedia edition of “The Master of Rampling Gate,” a vampire story published in Redbook magazine in 1984 and set in an England mansion in the 19th century.

Back on December 13, Rice went on an Amazon customer forum and asked:     

What do you think? If regular publishing is having a very hard time marketing and distributing books effectively, should major authors think about making Kindle (if possible) their primary publisher? Kindle would then be the one to introduce and advertise the book, and Kindle could license limited hard cover editions for those addicted to the “real book.” Would this be good for authors? Would it be good for readers? Would Kindle do it?

She may still be exploring the Kindle idea, of course.

But Vook has been producing video books for Simon & Schuster and the HarperCollins imprint HarperStudio and also making works out of public domain texts. At least for the short term, it’s more likely that we’ll see Vook productions on the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad than on a Kindle. But for further down the road — perhaps in 2010 — it appears that Amazon is also working on a more expensive Kindle “Multi” model that would be available side-by-side with the popular, current-generation 6-inch Kindle “Uno.” (“Uno” and “Multi” are my placeholder names for the two products, aimed at expressing more simply what they would be all about, but more on that in a later post.)

The Kindle “Multi,” with a color touch screen and faster screen refresh, could accomodate Vook offerings by Anne Rice and other authors, and like th iPad it is bound to generate serious buzz and love.

But it all raises serious questions for me:

• It’s one thing to change the way we read from words on paper to words on an electronic e-Ink display that emulates paper, but is it really likely that the activity, processes, pleasures and utility of reading are going to transformed from words to words and video and audio for a critical mass of readers?
• Does the bundling of multimedia with the text of a story or a book add so much value that readers or audience are likely to want to spend significantly more either for the bundled content or for devices on which to play the bundled content?
• Are authors in any significant numbers likely to transform their own creative processes so that they begin and proceed with the intention to create vooks rather than books?

Don’t get me wrong. I believe there will be cool vooks, and I will occasionally pay to download them. I expect Vook will be a very successful company that will grow dramatically and change in many ways over the next couple of years. I’m convinced that both Amazon and Apple will find ways to deliver vook content on a wide range of different devices, including PCs and Macs.

But I am also skeptical that this will be a mass market any time soon. Of course, that’s basically what Steve Jobs said about the Kindle and ereaders back in January 2008, right?