Fourth Story Media

It’s been a busy month here at Fourth Story!

On May 18th, Lisa Holton spoke at MIT’s Sandbox Summit on a panel about innovative approaches in children’s digital books with Peter H. Reynolds (Children’s book author & illustrator and founder of FableVision), and Ben Vershbow (Digital Producer, NYPL), moderated by Alexandra Kennedy (Executive Director of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art).

And on May 26th, Ariel Aberg-Riger, spoke at YPulse’s Youth Marketing Mashup on the panel “Multimedia Narratives: Engaging Youth on Multiple Screens” with Jordan Levin (CEO, Generate), Craig Bland (VP Strategic Partnerships & Content, Alloy), and R. Eric Lieb (Partner, Blacklight Transmedia), moderated by Mashable’s Ben Parr.

Both panels (and conferences!) were incredibly invigorating, covering everything from new distribution models to the importance of authenticity to managing sustained engagement. But, as Publisher’s Weekly picked up in it’s coverage “Regardless of Screen, Story Still Matters” – no matter what shape the future may take, good storytelling remains at the core, possibly more important now than ever.

Whoohooo! The 2010 Webby Award Honorees were just announced, and The Amanda Project is being honored in the youth category! We couldn’t be happier. A big shout-out and congratulations to our fellow honorees:

• Adobe Youth Voices: PeaPods
• Erky Perky
• Marvel “Create Your Own Comic” Web site
• Nick Jr Boost
• Packland
• Simple Machines
• The Adventures of Freddo and The Time Machine
• The Best of Us Challenge
• V Inspired

And don’t forget to vote for the 2010 Webby Award Nominees!

Tim Meany has a lengthy (and quite excellent) post about the future of the story that recently blew up our Twitter feed with it’s large shout out to The Amanda Project & Fourth Story Media. An immensely quotable piece, it touches upon everything from the future of publishing, to paid content online, to Star Wars:

“When I first heard [The Amanda Project] described I immediately thought about Star Wars – people love the characters from Star Wars and extend them outside of the official intergalactic regulatory commission. They write, draw, dress-up as and discuss their favorite characters. Some franchises fear this loss of control and work against it – but how much smarter is it to embrace this fervor? Sure there’s a loss of control, but creators suffer this loss of control as soon as their book hits the shelf or their movie hits the big screen. The Amanda Project embraces this loss of control and allows the story to evolve within the community.

The Amanda Project also challenges our story about the future of publishing in more direct ways. While they’ve innovated and turned the audience on its head, they also have an editorial staff (“who are equally comfortable with traditional and brand-new forms of storytelling”) and a varied distribution model (“we believe that great stories can survive—and thrive—by finding their readers where they are: in bookstores, on websites, on cell phones, and in new media forms that are only just beginning to develop.”). Distribution is messy and always evolving, and there’s room for print, I suspect, well into the future. Even for the next generation.”

Read the whole piece on arc90

Peter Miller from the LA Times’ “Jacket Copy” has a great write-up of our SXSW Interactive “New Publishing & Web Content” panel:

“…It was nice, then, to end the day with a panel of publishing experts who were neither reactionaries nor doom-sayers. The centerpiece of the New Publishing and Web Content panel was the Amanda Project from Fourth Story Media. An experiment in bridging the best aspects of Web and print, the site invites young women to contribute to an ongoing book series about a character named Amanda.

The project doesn’t spell out the end of traditional book publishing as much as demonstrate another avenue. Lisa Holton, whose tenure in publishing often crossed over into new media, suggested that we should all take a step back from bashing publishers simply because they can’t turn on a dime. Holton and her co-panelists (including Web design guru Jeffrey Zeldman) pointed out that the publishing process may seem unwieldy and redundant from the sidelines, but it holds tremendous intrinsic value beyond nostalgia. The world hasn’t necessarily passed publishing by, it just has created multiple new intersecting markets. What’s wrong with that?

In nearly any discussion of books these days, the argument usually devolves into either/or. Either the publishers get with the program or else. That “or else” can be a monotonous drum beat at SXSWi that drowns out genuine dialog. But for a moment, it felt in the convention center as if the attendees forgot what the program was or how it might be implemented. It felt like, briefly, all was forgiven.”

Read the full piece here.

Publishers Weekly asked a number of children’s publishers, scouts, and editors (including FSM’s Lisa Holton) what they’re expecting at this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair (March 23-26). Some soundbytes:

Natasha Ferrant, Literary Scout: “There’s a real buzz about YA literature, which is tremendously exciting. I’m hoping to see less of the paranormal stuff and more good, original writing. Much as I love them—I do, I do—I don’t want to read any more vampire books, probably EVER AGAIN. What I really want to find is simple and oh so elusive: a strong middle-grade series with great writing and an even better story.”

Rob McMenemy, Senior VP Egmont English Language & Central Europe: “The digital agenda will loom even larger this year, taking more airtime and even more space, but we are fast approaching the point where it won’t be a separate agenda at all nor just an interesting sideshow, but rather an integral part of the business of publishing and rights.”

Lisa Holton, CEO Fourth Story: “I am going mainly to hear what my international colleagues are thinking about their business—how they publish, who they are publishing, and how they think the landscape—digital and print—is changing.”

Klaus Humann, Publisher Carlsen Verlag, Germany: “Our job as publishers had always been and will always be to take risks, invest into new authors, encourage them to write their first books and get them published. We are not paid to follow trends. We are paid to create them.”

Read the full piece in PW.

Shelli (@srjohannes) from Market My Words has a two-part interview (part one, part two) with FSM’s Creative Development & Marketing Director Ariel Aberg-Riger about marketing The Amanda Project. It’s quite long (but chock full)! A small taste:

What are the top 3 reasons The Amanda Project interactive model works for readers?

1. Most importantly, it’s an amazing, well-written story. We have fantastic, bestselling YA authors like Melissa Kantor and Laurie Stolarz working collaboratively to create a rich narrative core and to build Amanda’s world. It’s only with such a strong base that we are able to extend the story and invite our readers in to collaborate and interact as well. If they weren’t hooked in the first place, they wouldn’t care!
2. It’s a structured creative environment. We find that although the sky really is the limit in terms of what you can invent and who you can be on The Amanda Project, our readers and writers create most readily when we actually impose certain constraints. For example, every Friday we publish a new story on the site, and each week’s story ends with a call to action that asks a very specific question (e.g. Have you ever lied to make people like you? Is this Amanda’s purple ink?) which we find both lowers the barrier to entry for participation (aka the blank page effect), as well as creates a much more cohesive direction for the continuation of the story.
3. It’s universal. The Amanda Project deals with issues all teen girls (and anyone, really) can relate to – identity, friendship, difficult decisions, loyalties, secrets, the drama of high school life – so it’s easy to lose yourself in the character you create, and really immerse yourself in Amanda’s world.

Daily Grommet gives a great endorsement of The Amanda Project as a “treat” for those “tough-to-shop-for teen girls in your life” (and for grown-ups with a fondness for YA)!

Remember how nutty everyone got over the Da Vinci Code? Staring at The Last Supper, looking for clues… well, Invisible I, the first novel in a new series called The Amanda Project, is a little bit like that, but its target audience is teen girls. It is a story of a mysterious “new girl” at Endeavor High who touches the lives of the main characters, and just as quickly disappears, leaving everyone — including the reader — compelled to figure it all out. Even more importantly, it’s a totally interactive experience. Beyond reading the book, your teen can use a cell phone camera to crack a code in the book, visit the website, and contribute her own stories and ideas to the online community.

Author Melissa Kantor creates a vivid and authentic reality, with text messages and passed notes baked right into the story, as well as moments of gritty realism (an alcoholic parent) all tastefully and carefully handled.

The next book in the series, Signal from Afar, is due out in June, which makes it a great time to join in the fun.

Read the full post here!

Lisa Holton discussed Fourth Story Media’s current thinking, and recent developments in The Amanda Project at Digital Book World January 26th on the panel “Synergizing the Book and Web: Books Plus in the 21st Century.” The panel – moderated by Market Partners International’s Lorraine Shanley, with Will Schwalbe (our office mate and CEO of Cookstr), and Hillel Cooperman (founder of Jackson Fish Market) among others – covered everything from the challenges of being a start-up to exploring new digital business models.

Some highlights:

• The twitterverse especially loved Lisa’s mention of The Amanda Project’s recent collaboration with Modcloth.
• ForeWord highlighted The Amanda Project as an “innovative application of reader engagement in authoring,” alongside other projects like the ever-popular book social networking site GoodReads, and HarperCollins’ new site for aspiring writers Inkpop.
• And (our favorite) Chapman/Chapman said in his DBW summary: “Fourth Story Media are doing very, very cool shit with transmedia storytelling.”

Last week, MediaBistro’s Ron Hogan stopped by our offices to chat with us about The Amanda Project and what we’re up to at Fourth Story Media in general. We had a great time – jumping into a discussion about immersive fiction – soap operas, ARGs and role-playing games, books – the works! From his post:

“The effect, we commented to Holton, was like a participatory soap opera, or a massive Dungeons & Dragons campaign with one dungeonmaster and hundreds of players; she brought up the classic text-based puzzle games Infocom created for home computer owners in the 1980s, which set us both on a nostalgia kick for their adaptation of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, one of the truly great interactive fictions. (Interestingly, that was the second time this month we’d found ourselves in that conversation!)

“A lot of adults had a really hard time grasping this,” Holton says of the way the books and the website link together into one overarching immersive narrative, “but I would explain it to a 13-year-old girl and ” (she snaps! her fingers) “she’d get it in 30 seconds. In fact, beta users used to tell us it took them a long time to figure the website out, and it would turn out ‘a long time’ was five minutes.” Inspired by the initial success of The Amanda Project, Fourth Story is already preparing another series, a science-fiction-themed narrative aimed at young male readers. “In some ways, this is radically different than what I’d been doing for the last 20 years,” Holton reflects, “but the basics are still the same… What’s the story? And how do you think readers will be interested by it?”

Read the full piece now!

Today’s NYT mentions The Amanda Project in its front page article “Curling Up with Hybrid Books, Videos Included:”

The children’s division of HarperCollins recently released the first in a young-adult mystery series called “The Amanda Project,” and has invited readers to discuss clues and characters on a Web site. As the series continues, some of the reader comments may be incorporated into minor characters or subplots.

Susan Katz, publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books, predicted that “there is going to be a popular kind of literature where the author is seen as the leader of a large group and will pick and choose from these suggestions” by readers.

Read the full article here.

UPDATE: Book Case (a blog by the editors of BookPage) has a great post about The Amanda Project including a summary of Invisible I, the TAP video, and commentary on the NYT piece. Check it out!