The Future of the Story

A Long Time Ago

People gravitate to simple narratives and explanations – they’re easier to, well, explain. Discussion of the future of publishing often centers around the fact that publishers are big, ancient and dumb and won’t be relevant in the neat digital future. Traditional print publishers insist on such archaic things as editing, printing and payment. Simple explanations, however, miss the grainy textures of reality.

Another frequent tale is the common wisdom that people won’t pay for news. For a long time people have been conflating all types of information under this single banner of “news”. The Web then came and printing became silly and news became free. “News”, though, is too broad a term – and while plenty of information has become commoditized from the lack of a barrier to entry for distribution – all information cannot be painted with such a broad brush. Today you can just as easily learn that there’s a pending tsunami heading towards Hawaii from a blogging meteorologist as from CNN. We used to wait for the NY Times to describe a battle in the Pacific Theatre that happened weeks ago, and now it’s possible to learn about an event before your average NY Times reporter. Classic commoditization. The newspaper, though, used to bundle up so much more than just a statement of fact and occurrence – editorialism, composition, classified ads, word jumbles, Family Circus, thoughtful investigative journalism and so much more. News, even in the newspaper, was commoditized years ago – it was riding along with higher-value content. On the Web, that packaging has been peeled back and the valuable content has been scattered – no longer in the [evil] clutches of the publisher. So while people may not pay for news, they will certainly pay for word jumbles, curation, opinion, nice photos, infographics, insight and maybe even the comics. And here’s the dirty little secret, they’ll have to pay for those things, as they are expensive to create.

But look at how long that preceding paragraph is – how much easier is it to say that ‘people won’t pay for news online‘? It’s hard to communicate nuance, so most people don’t try.

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away

What of the future of the long-form narrative – the story? In the clean well-understood future without “publishers” authors will type fiction novels into Word on their laptops and post them to their Websites – no middleman required! Democratization of information; information wants to be free; Here Comes Everybody; we’re all publishers now. Nirvana.

One problem, though… we just threw the baby out with the bath water! This concept [the end of the publisher] has always bothered me, I’ve always suspected that publishers had learned a lot since Gutenberg, and probably some things that weren’t just about printing, binding and physical distribution. Things like editing, composition, working with authors, story-telling and building anticipation – aren’t those capabilities still important?

A New Hope

With this as a backdrop, I anxiously awaited Jeffery Zeldman’s SXSW panel on the future of publishing – New Publishing and Web Content. There’s much to say about this panel, it was excellent, but I encountered something so compelling and so relevant to what I’ve been thinking about lately that finding it was alone worth the price of the conference. This is The Amanda Project which challenges this neat story we’ve all crafted about the future of publishing in unexpected ways.

Lisa Holton, Founder and CEO of Fourth Story Media, was on the panel, along with Erin Kissane, former Happy Cog’er and current Web strategy and community lead for the Project. Lisa helped run a traditional publisher, and did well bringing real books to market (you might have heard of them: Harry Potter & 39 Clues). Lisa then founded Fourth Story Media, with a mission articulated well on the company’s About page:

We develop compelling intellectual property and distribute it across traditional and nontraditional channels including books, collaborative web fiction, and social media. Our stories are enriched, refreshed, and socially shared by our online readers, while the readers who encounter our stories in print can further immerse themselves in the cross-media narrative by joining their fellow readers online to discuss, expand, and celebrate the stories we tell.

At the heart of our company is an expanding circle of experienced writers, artists, developers, and producers who are equally comfortable with traditional and brand-new forms of storytelling. We also work with major publishing and media companies, ensuring the strongest possible marketing and distribution for our content.

Above all, 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.

Wow, that’s refreshing: carrying the story across media, editing, supporting audience engagement, professional writers and editors (!), and a focus on distribution. This brings us to Fourth Story’s The Amanda Project:

The first manifestation of the story was a print book, targeted to teenage girls. The Amanda Project site extends the story and allows young girls to join the community and contribute directly to the story through their writing. On the site, members can create a character, write stories featuring their characters along with characters from the main story, those created by others in the community or their friends. On a weekly basis, the editorial staff for The Project writes a prompt, which triggers a wave of writing among the community. Girls can upload pictures they’ve drawn, clues they’ve “found” or start a discussion. The Project’s authors and editors then will pull compelling community-created characters and plot lines into the print editions.

When I first heard this 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.

Happily Ever After

As a father of a soon-to-be teen girl, I’m excited that this innovation is targeted at her. Keeping young girls interested in reading and writing during their transformative years is a public service. In the early years of my kids’ schooling, I’ve been surprised by how much their teachers stress story-telling. Before they could spell they were asked to tell a story using pictures and and attempt at words. Hilarity often ensued. Story-telling is crucial to learning and effective communication.

Beyond my personal feelings about what they’re doing at The Amanda Project, people should take notice of their publishing model. Engaged audiences are profitable ones. Which brings us back to our narrative around the future of publishing – if traditional print publishers can take the value that they’ve spent many decades cultivating and apply them to new distribution models, there’s room for them as protagonists of our story. The successful story-tellers of the future will be individuals and organizations that understand the need to balance the old (editorialism, curation, anticipation, composition) with the new (new distribution models, audience engagement, no barriers to entry).