The Amanda Project

Forbes.com is reporting on a collaboration between 4th Story Media and HarperCollins in the creation of a multi-platform series:

4th Story Media and HarperCollins Publishers today announced their partnership in The Amanda Project, the first multi-platform series to be written in part by its audience, girls ages 12-14. 4th Story Media, which owns all rights for the property, will produce the content for The Amanda Project with a creative team including web design agency Happy Cog, young adult authors, artists and graphic designers. HarperCollins Publishers, which is a strategic partner in the venture and an investor, has acquired the rights to publish an eight-book The Amanda Project series worldwide.

What is anything?

Anything is a self-editing, collaborative magazine.

From the site:

When all pages have been filled, a notification email will be sent to all contributors. Soon after, editing functionality will be disabled, making all contributions permanent.

This project is inspired by web sites like ffffound.com, Derek Powazek’s Kvetch.com, and Maura Johnston’s Bittersweets.org, and off-line projects like Christy-Claire’s Something Anything.

Penguin’s new storytelling experiment

Source: Nonlinearity

Penguin is embarking on another experiment in online storytelling. They are working with ‘unfiction’, an alternate reality gaming site. I have signed up for more info when it becomes available.

…in a few weeks Penguin will be embarking on an experiment in storytelling (yes, another one, I hear you sigh). We’ve teamed up with some interesting folk and challenged some of our top authors to write brand new stories that take full advantage of the functionalities that the internet has to offer – this will be great writing, but writing in a form that would not have been possible 200, 20 or even 2 years ago. If you want to be alerted when this project launches sign up here – all will be revealed in March.

Better linking…

Source: Two tools we need to improve online information

This post concerns tools to improve online documentation. I especially like the piece on cross-references. I am convinced that linking as it currently exists is incomplete. It is primarily unilateral.

Trackbacks and pings and RDF descriptors and microformats are important technologies that need to be expanded. Also, there is a world of work done by Ted Nelson that is yet to be implemented on a large scale.

From the post:

The first goal might be implemented like this: an author puts a form at the end of a document, requesting cross-references. A reader can enter a URL and a topic that it covers. The form can also indicate whether the document should be read before the current one (in other words, it’s more introductory) or after (in other words, it’s more advanced). The author ultimately evaluates the suggestion; software assistance should also be available to make it easy to include a link in a document in a standard format. Finding the cross-references may also be a task where publishers can add value to a community.

and…

When document A adds a link to document B, the author of document B should receive a ping asking him or her to reciprocate. A link that both sides agree on is considered much more reliable than a link made by just one side. A lot of authors would like to link to popular documents, hoping to ride on its coattails. So if the author of document B says, “yes, make this link,” it’s considered to be highly reliable. If the author just fails to respond, the link should still receive some consideration but be rated as less reliable. And if the author says, “No, this link is not appropriate,” crawlers should reject it.

Innovation in management

Source: How to Build a Nimble Company by Gary Hamel

What distinguishes our age from every other is not the world-flattening impact of communications, not the economic ascendance of China and India, not the degradation of our climate, and not the resurgence of ancient religious animosities. Rather, it is a frantically accelerating pace of change.

The goal, then, is to build organizations that are capable of continual, trauma-free renewal. An apt analogy is found in the body’s autonomic systems. When you step on a treadmill and start to jog, your heart automatically increases the blood supply to your muscles. When you stand up in front of an audience to speak, your adrenal gland spontaneously pumps out a hormone that accelerates your heart rate and heightens your faculties. And when you glance at someone who is physically attractive to you, your pupils dilate reflexively, drinking in the agreeable visage. Automatic. Spontaneous. Reflexive. These aren’t the words we typically use to describe deep change in large organizations. And therein lies the challenge: to make deep change more of an autonomic process—to build organizations that are capable of continuous self-renewal in the absence of a crisis.

Many factors contribute to strategic inertia, but three pose a particularly grave threat to timely renewal. The first is the tendency of management teams to deny or ignore the need for a strategy reboot. The second is a dearth of compelling alternatives to the status quo, which often leads to strategic paralysis. And the third: allocational rigidities that make it difficult to redeploy talent and capital behind new initiatives. Each of these barriers stands in the way of zero-trauma change; hence each deserves to be a focal point for management innovation.

Publishing is facing a sea-change brought on primarily by the Internet and therefore must adapt its practices and business models to survive. This is an incredible opportunity for the first company to find the right model.

What I think is lacking is a bottom-up approach to innovation in publishing companies. Why are strat plans the purview of a select group? How can blogs and wikis increase the participation of all employees in the discussions that effect the success of a business?

There is the wisdom of the crowds that is largely untapped in corporations. This needs to be let loose. Everyone should feel like they have a stake in the success of their company. Relegating employees to their place as the cogs in the machine does no one any good. It demoralizes the employee and it robs the company of the talent and ideas that come from those closest to the day-to-day work of the company.

Liftoff! When books leave the page

http://hbook.com/magazine/articles/2006/jan06_gralley.asp

This is a very good discussion about story-telling possibilities found in a non-linear world. The concept of ‘paper thinking’ is a good one.

I never considered children’s books as a forum for experimenting in non-linear story-telling but it makes perfect sense. The examples Gralley gives of experiments in paper-less thinking are excellent.

Here is a link to a noninteractive demonstration: http://jeangralley.com/books_unbound/

"Bad Math Among eBook Enthusiasts"

This is an excellent post by Tim O’Reilly about the economics of ebook pricing. There is a really good discussion about possible business models, including ad-based books.

The discussion in the comments section is also worth your time.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/12/bad_math_ebooks_kindle.html

The Unfortunates, B.S. Johnson

http://www.newstatesman.com/199911080053

This is a link to a 1999 review of a reissue of The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson.

Seems like an excellent work, well-suited for the nonlinear world of the Web. I haven’t read this but I intend to.

From the review:

The novel comes in a box and comprises 27 sections, bound only by a removable wrapper. The first and last sections are marked as such, but the remaining 25 are intended to be encountered in an order of the reader’s own choosing. You shuffle, and then you shuffle some more, defying the gimmick to work, because a gimmick is exactly what it seems.

More from the review:

Johnson’s conceit is that this is how the mind works: recollection isn’t linear, it’s arbitrary, and a narrative dotted with disjunctions is a true narrative of the backwardness of memory.

The novel as object

http://booktwo.org/notebook/vonnegut-the-novel-the-object/

Nice post from booktwo.org that starts from the premise that the novel requires input from readers for its success.

The novel is a recent phenomenon that has been shaped by the codex. The exciting thing about our future is that the novel is being freed from this shape. The uniqueness of the novel is the contribution of the reader, not the means of reproduction.

Also, the idea of the page as a screen is simple.

Lessons from the music industry

http://www.techgazing.com/?p=86

The post above is an excellent analysis of the music and text publishing industries. A lot of people are looking at the changes in the music industry to glean a glimpse of what text publishing will be like.

I like this quote from Fran Toolan:

In music, with each new ‘device’ something improved for the end user – usually it was the quality of the audio sound. That really helped the adoption of new technologies. Books -as we know them today – will not have this advantage. Until books start getting written differently – with links to other places and incorporating social networking opportunities – the content will not be enhanced by the device.

I am tired of the comments sections of posts like this in which people decry the digital and romanticize the ‘feel’ of a book. Yes, we get it. There is a tactile sensation to reading a book that is valuable. This doesn’t mean that books are going away in favor of the digital.

I like Jeff Gomez’s notion in “Print is Dead”. He says print is dead the way God is dead. Sure, there are people who still read books and still believe in God. But neither books nor God will ever hold the same sway in modern life as they had. For the religious, this might be cause for some sadness but I doubt God is concerned.