Category Archives: Upcoming Titles

Merging Media

The creator of CSI and Dutton are teaming up to produce a new three-book series of “digital novels”. Let me preface this move with a quote from the CSI guy, Anthony Zuiker

“I personally don’t have the attention economy to read a 250-page crime novel from start to finish.”

So that’s where he is coming from, on this. Zuiker goes on to say that these suspense-thillers will “reward” readers with rich media and video to enhance the reading experience. Basically, Zuiker will write an outline, then a ghost-writer will crank out 100 chapters and then Zuiker will back in and write 20 “cyber-bridges” (how lame-o is that phrase? Is this 1980? -ed.) for people to watch, before continuing on to the next chapter.

Of course, the example they give is a reading up to a crime, then log-on to watch a sex snuff film, and then go back to the book. I do have to concede this to the Hollywood folks… you’ll probably sell more books if you are including websites to watch sex videos.

To be fair, I am all for this type of convergence. It’s interesting how all these media formats merge and play off each other. I just think that this one pitch misses the mark on just about all of it. They really should have planned to do more and dig deeper.

(from Variety)

Another new book I’m looking forward to

The new (supposedly expanded) edition of Don Tapscott’s Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything comes out April 17th! I’m not sure how much expansion they could do from the first edition, unless they just update the case studies. There has been so much in the past 18 months will social and group-think sites, that it has become obvious, to even the most stuck-in-the-mud businesses, that collaboration is the future.

Let me know if you run across any advance reviews out there. I’d like to read them and see if the new edition is worth buying.