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Behind-The-Books Blog

Brave new book world

Monday, October 18th, 2010

You may already have spotted the news that Allison & Busby’s ebooks will very shortly be distributed by a new collaboration of independent publishers – The Faber Factory.  It’s an exciting and fast moving time for publishing, but I stumbled upon the most intriguing recent example of this the other day with a mention of The Mongoliad.

The brainchild of a number of writers (Neal Stephenson for one), illustrators and techie people (the list reads like the credits for a movie) The Mongoliad is something a bit different: a serialised novel that will be embellished by its community of readers and extra media – cue portraits of characters, illustrations of the settings, articles on the background history. As the team behind it phrase it, the format they are working on ‘lets us share an intimacy with readers that isn’t possible when the books come out every three or so years, all at once, in doorstop format. When something gets you excited or bores you, we want to know. Another reason is that we are energized by the possibilities for creating parts of this novel not only as words, but as illustrations, graphic novels, maps, and eventually games and movies. […] After all, up until now novels have been defined by the technology of the printing press, and we don’t have to use that definition anymore unless it suits us.’

Exciting eh? Well if an adventure concerning the thirteenth-century battles between Europe and the Mongol Horde sounds like your cup of tea, check it out. There’s plenty to whet your appetite and if you subscribe you could be involved with the creation of a pretty epic piece of work.

Lesley Crooks, Sales & Digital Manager

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