A Vook™ is a video book created by Bradley Inman’s new company of the same name. So far my experience with “vooks” is limited to their iPhone app “Crush It! Vook” which is essentially Gary Vaynerchuk’s newest book in digital form and stacked with 13 videos (one for each chapter in the book) of @garyvee in action.
The physical “Crush It!” book sells for less than $15 on Amazon.com and is well worth buying. It’s a quick read (160 pages) covering topics ranging from building a personal brand, how to use social media to build a brand, discovering your passion and life lessons from Gary Vaynerchuk. I read the book once and then proceeded to re-read it immediately after.
So the book is good. But are 13 videos and the Crush It! digital book wrapped up in an iPhone app really worth $6.99?
In one word, absolutely. Having read an entire book using my iPhone in the past though, I highly recommend using the app as more of a companion to the physical book as opposed to a replacement. Reading on the iPhone screen can be very tedious.
Let’s dive into the app:
The vook takes about 10 seconds to load before presenting you with the Table of Contents for the digital book. Choose a chapter to start reading or choose a chapter and tap the top of the screen and you’ll presented with three options: Go back to the Table of Contents, Previous/Next Chapter arrows and change the font size (three levels).
Along the bottom menu you can select the ‘Watch’ button to see just the videos in the application in addition to ‘Connect’ and ‘About’ which we’ll talk about in a bit.
Each video is about 60 – 90 seconds long. The videos, though brief, build off of each chapter in the book and explains more about the subject by offering tons of useful insight from Gary Vaynerchuk and others. Video quality is pretty good and you have the option of double tapping the screen to get rid of the black bars below (zooms in to full screen video).
Finally, you have two more features in the app: a ‘Connect’ page which gives you a profile of the author, filmmaker (in this case Lauren Saffa) and more contact info for Gary Vaynerchuk, his publisher and Vook. The ‘About’ page is similar to the content you would find inside the book sleeve and credits for the production of the vook.
If I had to offer one negative I would say that the book portion of the app needs work. Amazon’s iPhone Kindle app offers a significantly better user experience in the sense that you can tailor your reading experience more to your needs with the Kindle app versus Vook’s built-in reader.
For example, with the Kindle app you can rotate your iPhone to landscape (widescreen) mode to read that way. Also, if you close the Kindle app it will re-open to the last page where you left off before closing the app. The Vook reader doesn’t support landscape mode nor does it save where you last left off before closing the app.
There’s a lot real estate agents (and brokers) could learn from someone like Gary Vaynerchuk. Many people in our profession are so entrenched in the old way of doing things (gate keeping and the like) that personal branding and proving that you care will go a long way in getting more clients and repeat business.
Buy the Crush It! Vook on iTunes
Photo Credit: magerleagues
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