Our friend Kate Evans points out this little gem from NPR...or should I say wem? Here's a highlight: "The way we read is changing. Time once spent curled up with a good book is now often devoted to catching up on blogs, and browsing Web sites. One publishing company is trying to take advantage of those habits, offering fiction in serial form, online...."A wovel is a Web novel," [Victoria] Blake says. "There's an installment every Monday. At the end of every installment, there's a binary plot branch point with a vote button at the end."
p.s. Guess what the wagon wheel/snow shovel device pictured above is called. (Hint: A wovel.)
1 comment:
I keep waiting for the publishing world to figure out that the way to save the novel is NOT by trying to "modernize" it.
Haven't they learned a thing from what happened to the music industry? The minute they start putting out novels in e-form, that will signal the end of anyone ever PAYING for them!
This seems so painfully obvious and yet everyone is rushing headlong towards Kindle, etc., like lemmings heading off the cliff.
What they SHOULD be doing is launching a massive marketing campaign (a la what, say, the dairy industry does for milk) emphasizing the old-fashioned, anachronistic quality of books. They're NOT modern - they're old and clunky and solid and weird and cool-looking. THAT is their appeal. They should be the Levi 501s of media: solid, reliable, with a timeless quality. Definitely NOT trendy or "now", but yet never totally out of style either.
Instead, the geniuses at the wheel are looking to turn them into files anyone can download from a crack site along with Photoshop and the latest teenybopper record.
Oh right, the money will all come from online advertising... you know: that stuff you close without even opening when it pops up, or those banner ads no one reads.
Morons....
Post a Comment