British book publishing giant Penguin is carrying out an experiment that takes six books from six different authors and distributes them through new media channels over six weeks. Called We Tell Stories, some people say the campaign is pure evil and others are hailing it as a sign of the future.
Two of the first weeks include serializing a story called Slice through two LiveJournal blogs and two Twitter accounts, and placing a second story called The 21 Steps on a navigable Google Map. Three stories remain and the distribution formats to be used are unannounced. (Actually, we hear now that the next step will be live performance - we'll see what that looks like!)
Slice, the story of a girl and her parents, was delivered by serialized LiveJournal and Twitter postings. Now that the week has passed, it's pretty frustrating to try to read the stories in reverse chronological order.
Apparently some of these media work better than others for story telling in real time. A mere 78 people signed up to "follow" the parents' Twitter account, more than 110 followed the daughter. As Gawker said in its coverage - "But getting away from Twitter is exactly the reason we read books!" Said like a true Twitter user.
Slice's LiveJournal entries have a respectable if small number of comments left on them. Readers seemed dissatisfied with the end of the story and there's one allegation of dummy accounts posting fake comments - it's downright LonelyGirlish in tone if not in scale.
The other story of note so far, a thriller called The 21 Steps, is easier to read. Navigation around the map is quite controlled, though, rich media elements are minimal for the first 6 chapters (all I could get through) and the medium does slow down reading. That said, I enjoyed the birds-eye view of the places that were being written about. I might finish that story later.
Author Charles Cumming said in an interview with CoolHunting yesterday about the project that the process of writing along with game designers, within the technical limitations of Google Maps, was a positive experience.
It was limiting only in the sense that I couldn't explore character in any great depth or get into the more psychological or emotional sides of the story. Plot was everything. Suspense was everything. It was all about pace and movement. But that in itself was quite exciting. Once I understood the parameters of what Penguin were trying to achieve, I had a lot of fun with it.
Booklist's Keir Graff writes of the effort, "Well, it beats cell-phone novels, but I still don’t think this is the fiction-delivery vehicle for me...It’s an odd sensation, really: simple words can evoke a world in our imaginations, but as soon as the words are married to real-world images, they lose much of their power. Similarly, it can be fun to look at a map and imagine what the places really look like, but here, the Google satellite view just made me frustrated because I wanted to see what the place really looks like at street level and inside the buildings."
My experience was similar.
Brady Forrest, at O'Reilly Radar, found the maps integration inspiring and started a list of other ways mapping and story telling could be put together.
I'm not sure that Google Maps alone is the best way to accomplish this goal. Forrest points to Portland mapping service Platial and it certainly seems like there's continued opportunity for any number of startups in this space beyond Google Maps.
The book publishing world, like so much of legacy media, is scrambling to stay relevant. We've written about collaborative novel writing here too, some of which has been explored by Penguin as well.
It will be interesting to see what the next three installments of We Tell Stories bring. So far none have seemed like a real winner to me. So far I'd rather see the whole book be offered for download on BitTorrent (see Laughing Squid) and then offering interactive elements to supplement the actual reading of the book. If it was good enough I'd pay for it. Most publishers would probably do well focusing for now on making their transition to a largely digital world truly good enough, if not great, and focus on making money afterwords. That might sound crazy, but it's not as crazy as reading a novel on Twitter a week after it was published.
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I think a better set of experiments which point more strongly to a positive future can be found at Podiobooks.com - there hundreds of authors are releasing podcasts of their books, and the site's software allows you to generate a subscription at any point in time that will then release the audio installments in order at the pace you request. So you can subscribe at any point in time but don't have to manually catch up, you simply start with the first installment and go from there.
For authors they have suggested donations (with the author's getting 75% of the proceeds, so any one donation likely results in higher payments than most book sales would) and in many cases the authors are also releasing the books in a more traditional form (Scott Zigler's Infected was just given a major, hardcover release from Crown publishers a major publisher house on April 1st). The Podiobooks software inserts ads into the podcasts, so for the past month has been promoting that release to note just one example.
As a reader (and someone who buys more books many weeks than I think the average US adult does in a year) I do not think books are going away. However I do think that reference books, especially technical ones, will have to come out more frequently and quickly - and that fiction authors will continue to explore innovations - podcasts and other items being I think the most promising and very much in keeping with storytelling traditions.
Great stories will continue to find an audience - and there will still be a valuable role for good editors (some of the online, independent storytelling does suffer I think from poor/light editing at times) but the best is as good if not better than anything out there - and niche stories (Mur Lafferty's "Playing for Keeps" take on the superhero genre for example) can find an audience and fans.
Shannon
Posted by: Shannon Clark | April 3, 2008 5:37 PMI detest the mere thought of reading a book that is on a computer screen.
There is something special about holding a book, turning the pages, earmarking the pages, looking back--going forward, putting the book down, picking the book up, misplacing the book, etc...
For whatever reason the computer screen and/or digital book readers always make me want to skim. Not condusive to actually reading from cover to cover.
The Masked Millionaire
Posted by: The Masked Millionaire | April 3, 2008 8:32 PMwww.TheMaskedMillionaire.com
I don't think this is anything new. I already read stories posted by people on their blogs, although I usually think of them as real events. I think it was high time somebody with good storytelling ability started telling stories on blogs.
As for Google Maps; hasn't anybody tracked the protagonist of a novel from satellite images beside me?
Posted by: balik | April 4, 2008 12:32 AMThanks for raising the discussion on this project, which has been extremely exciting to work on. As 'the publisher' of We Tell Stories, one of the most interesting aspects has been working with the authors and witnessing the collaboration between writers of traditional books and designers of games.
Posted by: jeremy ettinghausen | April 4, 2008 1:55 AMAlmost unanimously, the authors have described the experience as harder than they expected, but also more satisfying. We've encouraged them to think not just about story and plotting, but about 'user experience' which has been I think a new challenge and one to which they have really responded.
One author has told me that that working on the project has taught them something new about writing and has given him a new tool to be used in future writing. Whether this is to be digital or 'traditional' writing I do not yet know, but I think that the project has highlighted the importance of good storytelling, whatever media is used to tell the tale.
Jeremy Ettinghausen
Actually, this article seems to miss the point of the exercise. Not is each a story in its own right, but each also leads the player into a a bigger, more interactive story, that is being played, and followed on other forums.
And, I feel, it is not merely telling a passive story through another medium - but exercises in introducing interactivity to the story.
I would urge players to read The 21 Steps, find the phone number flashed randomly onto the screen, call it, and find the hidden story.
Or - have a look at the forum at www.unfiction.com
While the Twitter/Livejournal story had issues, interacting with the characters at the climax (false climax, maybe) of the story was immensely satisfying - even knowing they were fictional characters part of a passive narrative.
Posted by: Adam | April 4, 2008 6:03 AMI LOVE the idea of experimentation, especially in the service of something literary. Alas, this seems a bit like "hyperlink" poems and stories. Just a little too awkward and contrived. And I agree with the commenter who refuses to read a book if it's not between two covers (the ultimate enterable/exitable text platform and much more resistant to sand than a pooter). As often as I'm online, I'll just as often print out an article any longer than a blog post.
Posted by: Curt | April 4, 2008 11:10 AMI think it is really neat that they are exploring alternative channels. I still prefer real books, but it is neat to have them available through other means. It would be really neat if they linked up to a service like http://www.dailyreader.net
Posted by: BGirl | April 4, 2008 11:50 AMIt sounds like an innovative way of bringing exposure to authors and books to me.
The key thing is not to 'podcast' the entireity of the novel, but to snapshot it and draw interest to it.
Print books will never die because of the internet, but I for one applaud the efforts by Penguin to embrace new media interactions on the web.
Posted by: Andy | April 4, 2008 1:28 PM