In an interview with paidContent, Ellie Hirschhorn, Simon & Schuster’s EVP, chief digital officer, said that the company has plenty of apps available in the iTunes Store, such as a Klingon Dictionary app and author apps for writers such as Jodi Picoult. But for an actual book, the publisher feels that a marketplace where only books are sold is best.

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“We’re definitely playing in the app arena, but this is a different animal. It’s not better or worse, but as an editorial endeavor, it belongs in a bookstore,” she said. “The nice thing about an e-book is that it’s put in front of shoppers who want to buy books. In contrast an app is sold in a marketplace that has everything from urinal finders to calorie counters. A book gets lost in the shuffle.”

Another thing that appealed to Simon & Schuster about using the e-bookstore versus the app store for book sales is pricing. The enhanced version of Nixonland is being sold by Apple for $15.99. The enhanced version is also available in the Amazon store for the same price, but only for customers who have the iPhone and iPod touch. The basic version of the e-book is $13.99 from Apple and $12.59 for Amazon’s Kindle. “It’s really hard to charge $15.99 for an app, but if it’s presented as a book, readers are more likely to be more open to it,” Hirschhorn said.

The book, a history of how Nixon used the modern media, makes use of archival video footage from Simon & Schuster parent, CBS (NYSE: CBS). Among the 27 videos inserted into the text of the iBookstore’s enhanced e-book, there’s an original interview with the author conducted by CBS News Face the Nation anchor Bob Schieffer. 

“Time (NYSE: TWX) will tell, but the product itself lent itself very well to the mix of text and video,” Hirschhorn said. “Some of the other enhanced e-books are good, but they’re not an editorial initiative, where you can embed the video in the appropriate place within the text. Many other enhanced e-books are the equivalent of DVD extras, that are based on the book, but separate and apart from the text.”

For the time being, Simon & Schuster will concentrate its enhanced e-books on non-fiction. For one thing, there’s a lot of easily accessible archival content from its parent that it can make use of. Secondly, it will take time to work with fiction writers and editors about producing special material for an e-book, beyond an author interview.

The moves come as CBS most recent earnings report showed that digital sales were starting to take off for Simon & Schuster, which saw a 233 percent increase in digital publishing revenue for Q1, to $12 million.