A huge thank-you to Book Moot for aiming me toward a really fascinating new thing —
digital storytelling. I KNEW I was not being unreasonable when I had a huge argument with my agent about digital rights. Many publishing companies are not leaving them with the author, but instead of capitalizing on them, they’re sitting on them. Perhaps e-Books aren’t huge news for children’s and YA fiction (which is what I was told — “Nobody is doing anything with ePublishing in children’s books.”), but there’s definitely something there… potential, I believe it’s called. Anyway, do check out inanimate alice, an online serial children’s/YA story told with interactive media (Alice ages a bit each episode, and she’ll end at age 20). It’s a fast-paced, mysterious story, and the pictures and sounds support the text. It’s thoroughly absorbing, as good as having your own little movie, or, since it’s interactive, your own little game.
Want to get a fix on what digital books can do for beginning or non-readers? See Jean Gralley’s Books Unbound, which capitalizes on the possibilities for picture books, and read her thoughts that were first published in Horn Book Magazine this month last year. I’m a bibliophile and I love the texture and smells of paper, but I am eager to see where this new medium takes us.
