Enhanced eBook Edition of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest Coming

By Jason Boog 

9780316073851_154X233.jpgEnhanced eBooks have been the talk of the town this week–from SXSW to bestselling novelists. Over at Daily Finance, Hachette revealed a few new projects to create digital books with fancy new features, including a “NASCAR-oriented app” and “a synchronized text/audio edition” of Echo Park by Michael Connelly.

Even better, they plan to offer “standalone app” version of David Foster Wallace’s sprawling novel, Infinite Jest. Out of all the writers slated for an enhanced edition, Wallace’s work could be perfect–with plenty of footnotes, inter-textual references, and endless cultural allusions.

What would you like to see in this app? Here’s more from Maja Thomas, senior VP of Hachette digital–quoted in the article: “We thought, wouldn’t it be great if, when a footnote appears, there’s a symbol in the e-version of the text, and if you tap on it, you can go right to the footnote, and then tap back into the text at any time.”