Publishers Bet on 'Enhanced' Textbooks for the Digital Future

The publishing industry is chockablock with jargon, but one word we're going to hear a whole lot more of over the next few months and years is "enhanced." After all, as the world increasingly goes digital, stand-alone texts may not be enough to justify pricey new gadgets, be they e-readers, smartphones or tablets like Apple's (AAPL) iPad. That's apparently the rationale behind the investment of $2.5 million in seed funding in Vook, a company specializing in multimedia-enhanced books, by a group of backers including Huffington Post Chairman Ken Lerer.