Digital publishing

Want to make the most of the web, tell your story across different media, engage readers online as well as off? Find out more in this Q&A with Alison Norrington, a writer who’s studying ‘transmedia storytelling’ for a PhD about emerging platforms for writers and much much more.

What are you doing?

I'm working on the first chick-lit transmedia project. It's a novel that will be fragmented across a series of media (both on and offline). It's the ultimate 'lean back' (relax and unwind) and 'lean forward' (get involved, chat in forums and engage with story threads) experience.

Do you blog?

AN: I used a blog for my 4th novel - Staying Single. I blogged this story as it seemed the obvious choice. Blogging works especially well for chick lit - diary tone, no tech skills required - and it was FREE!

And what’s your grand plan?

As far as a grand plan goes I want to see stories remaining within the confines of the page/printed book, but also to maximise the potential what the …

The term ‘print on demand’ (POD) crops up on this blog from time to time. I’m also often asked questions about it at seminars. So to clear things up, what exactly is POD and what does it mean for authors?

Quite simply, POD is a process of printing which does what it says on the tin – it prints as many books as is required at any given time.

Some speculate that POD could change the way publishers do business.Traditionally publishers estimate the number of copies of a book that they think will sell and produce print runs accordingly. In order to be cost-effective print runs tend to be large (ie, into the thousands), but this also runs the risk that not all the books will be sold. Disappointing sales can leave the publisher with a deficit in their budget and storage costs for the unwanted stock, which may eventually need to be pulped.

POD is good news for the published author as it means their book can be made available to order a copy at the time - in effect, it need …

Years ago when I was working for a publishing house that specialises in popular culture books, there was a story doing the rounds about one particular celebrity.

This singer, who was well past his pop prime (hence had time on his hands, we suspected), apparently ran his own fan club, and guarded his image so keenly that he wouldn’t license any content for inclusion in a bumper pop compendium.

At the time, his actions seemed odd (what self-respecting celeb didn’t have a PA to manage their fans at arm’s length?), mean spirited (why not allow us to print a biog?) and not a little self-obsessed. But actually, he was almost certainly on to something.

You can bet that this popstar is today running his own website - and the best websites are those where the subject goes to the trouble to have some personal input.

You must have felt that magic when the web puts you in close proximity of someone who you’d never normally have a chance to meet in the usual course of things. …

With news of the iPad reaching fever pitch, I've been gadget watching, observing commuters and their reading. Today it was paperbacks nil, iPhones 3 (these were games – Poker, Peggle etc – not books), and eReaders 1 (held aloft on the down escalator at London's Liverpool Street).

My journey into work is mercifully brief but nonetheless I am seeing habits in transition. The eBook reader as travelling companion can work, thanks to long battery life, multiple titles and pageturning with one hand.

So as an author, do you need to concern yourself with eBooks and eReaders, what they are and what they do, and how to write the perfect e-seller?

The buzz around Apple's long-awaited unveiling of its tablet computer, the iPad, is that it feels good and is a serious contender. Earlier this month the Consumer Electronics Show 2010 - the tech analyst’s barometer of what’s to come - had an astonishing number of eReaders on display, with even manufacturers best known for other categories …

You’re writing a book and you want to make money. Yet the expected rite-of-passage for any new writer is a sojourn in the wilderness of holding down multiple jobs, struggling to get an agent, and – well – not earning a great deal of cash. Not for a while, at any rate.

‘Writer’ has never been up there with lawyer, doctor, broker etc, as one of the UK’s best paid jobs. Nor, thankfully, is it up there with the Worst Jobs with the Best Pay. I’d say it’s a whole lot more glamorous than 21hr crab-fishing shifts in Alaska. But it’s a breadline kind of glamour, isn’t it?

Actually there could be other ways to generate revenue. It could be that making money won’t always be about sales of your book. I spotted a site recently, one which is setting itself up as a new way for authors to make cash. I can’t vouch for it in any shape or form, but what I can say is it’s an interesting concept.

What Manfred Macx is suggesting revolves around your willingness as a …