Thank you for replying. I don’t really agree with much of what you say. First, developing what our understanding of what a book app could be:

The Waste Land is a multimedia app. It deploys video, audio and text. Are you suggesting that it is the first app to do so? One of its developments might be argued to be the syncing of the readings to the text. It's good, but it isn’t a development, is it? (You can see text synced to audio and video at any karaoke bar.) Could you set out for us please what The Waste Land has done that no previous app has attempted to do and/or achieved. (Also, please note that the app is buggy: I had to watch Fiona Shaw playing at fast-forward last night while I waited for video and text to resync, and I had no way of escaping this; and couldn’t they have done better than small beige boxes for the captions?)

How it used the digital medium to deepen reader engagement with the 90-year-old poem: one clever way was by displaying notes alongside the poem and syncing them to the text, so that the reader would be helped to figure out what the hell Eliot was going on about. As I showed in my previous comment, these notes are, sadly, completely undermined by the fact that they have almost certainly been ripped from another source and no thought whatsoever has been given to how they should be redeployed in this new context.

‘As many people over the world have said …’ With apologies, lots of people across the UK read the Sun, but I’m not giving it any prizes. If you think that people over the world are qualified to judge a competition about technological innovation in this context then you could save yourself the trouble of convening a panel of judges and simply put it to the public vote.

You try to diminish my point (and not very subtly) by suggesting that all I said was that some of the picture captions were insufficient. I did say that, and I am right; but it wasn’t all I said. The issue here isn’t that some of the picture captions are insufficient, the issue is that some of the picture captions are insufficient, and the notes are flawed,  and there are typos throughout (and the images have been badly chosen) – because no qualified editor has been within a hundred miles of this app. The caption to the first manuscript page is so error-ridden (as I pointed out in my previous comment) that no editor on Faber’s freelancer list would have let it pass, no editor full-stop would have let it pass. If Faber or Touch Press can produce the invoice for a copy-editor or proofreader, I’ll be surprised; if they can produce the actual freelancer and get him or her to admit to letting this text pass, I’ll be amazed. It would probably have cost less than £500 to get all of the text sorted out by a qualified editor, possibly or 2% or 3%, but no more than 5%, surely, of the development cost of this app.

The Waste Land is one of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century, of the last five hundred years. Faber and Touch Press have taken on the responsibility of producing text to stand alongside it – and they haven’t had it copy-edited or proofread. How has this happened? Why has no one involved in the process of producing this app realized that text should be copy-edited or proofread? What would be the worst answer to this question: that they didn’t realize that you had to copy-edit or proofread text? That they did realize, but forgot? Or that they thought it didn’t really matter as long as the video played. This would be bad enough in any app, but here, because it’s The Waste Land, because it’s Faber – Eliot would be spinning in his grave, and I’m not entirely sure that Stephen Page, who clearly cares deeply about the editorial process, would be as sanguine as you are. This is a product that is on the market, with Faber’s name on it, not some prototype that you’ve judged.

Why do I care about this so much? First, because I should. Second, because you tell me to. Every other week someone will blog to say – quite rightly – that one of the ways that legacy publishers can add value is by giving authors access to editorial resources that self-publishers, and the Amazon imprints currently, don’t have access to. If this argument is good enough to secure the future of the publishing industry, then why isn’t it good enough for your awards? I repeat, no qualified editor has been within a hundred miles of this app, despite the editorial resources that Faber have within their offices.

What surprises is that I’m arguing for the quality control of every aspect of a product – and you seem to be arguing against me. Which means that you might be arguing for a get-out for publishers/app developers: make it sparkly enough, and you don’t need to worry too much about the other content. The logical conclusion of this is that it would be OK to publish gobbledegook as long the technology was up to date.  You’re not arguing this, but you’re taking the first step on a road that I don’t much like the look of. You’ve given an award to an app that is admirable in many ways, but is also deeply flawed in many others. I find it hard to believe that you would in any way suggest that this is a model – technology first, content a distant second – that publishers should adopt as a means of improving their chances of survival. But your award seems to do as much.

So at this point I feel comfortable saying that the problem isn’t entirely that I’ve missed the point of the ‘innovation’ awards, but perhaps that your awards have, in some respects at least, missed the point of ‘innovation’. An app should enhance and enrich the reading experience, but it should never compromise it in the name of 'innovation'. Perhaps you should reconsider the implications of giving awards out to apps that put 'innovation' before everything else.