During the Victorian Era in England, the trend of publishing the stories of novels in installments helped propel Charles Dickens to fame.
Publishing reporter Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) asks in The New York Times Media Decoder (@mediadecodernyt) blog, “Could serialized fiction finally force the ebook to evolve?”
Various ventures are trying to satisfy a common complaint about ebooks: that they are simply black-and-white digital reproductions of long-form print books, flat and unoriginal in their design and concept. One variation, what publishers call enhanced ebooks, with audio and video elements woven throughout the text, has largely fallen flat with readers.
But serialized fiction, where episodes are delivered to readers in scheduled installments much like episodes in a television series, has been the subject of an unusual amount of experimentation in publishing in recent months. In September, Amazon announced Kindle Serials, stories sold for $1.99 and published in short episodes that download onto the Kindle as the episodes are released....
In August, Byliner, a digital publisher, announced that it would begin a new digital imprint devoted to serialized fiction....
One of the most talked-about new experiments is taking serialized fiction a step further. It’s a novel called The Silent History that’s available on the Apple iPhone and iPad. It includes interactive, user-generated elements.
Also see USA TODAY’s article, “Will 'The Silent History' change the way we read?”
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