Well, here’s the deal. The book and the app are totally separate products with inherent strengths and weaknesses. Books are, by definition, static products. The moment they are printed they are unchanged. Now it’s true that we make changes with every printing, but if something changes the day after we print it, books can’t reflect it. But books are awesome at presenting information in a linear and approachable way. We can relate to books. They are comfortable. They just feel good in our hands. (And they have a much bigger reading area than a phone.)
Our apps are based on a proprietary content management system that lets us feed changes to it on a daily basis, and it took us three years to develop. And when something out of the ordinary happens, such as an approaching hurricane, we can introduce a new chapter right to your app seamlessly and keep you up-to-date literally hour by hour. When the Big Island’s volcano was causing disruption to visitor plans, for instance, we were on it. And when things settled down, we completely revamped many sections and pushed them immediately to the app. If something temporary is occurring, such as a company closing for a month for maintenance or the last seven miles of a highway and its beaches closing for several months due to road damage, we can change the text to deal with it. Also, apps don’t have a finite amount of space, so we can add additional content and photos. The apps are geo-aware so we have lots of additional technological features that aren’t possible with books as well as filters, favorites, trip planners, etc. And the apps have our custom-made geo-referenced maps that literally took thousands of hours to produce. The apps and the content management system that drive them were very costly to build and maintain. This is why we can’t simply "toss the app in free" with the purchase of a book.
So you see, each has its own place here at Hawaii Revealed and brings its own distinct advantage to our readers. Like siblings, they share the same DNA, but they ain’t the same. And like your cat, we have to feed the app every day.
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