Now anyone can create a beautiful digital zine of customized content, thanks to Flipboard. In a highly touted new feature, version 2.0 of the iconic newsstand app allows users to tap and select articles, photos, and video they find on Flipboard to create magazines on any interest or topic.
via Create Your Own Magazines with Flipboard | Screencast Tutorial – The Digital Shift, April 23, 2013
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Flipboard update turns readers into magazine publishers | CNET
Less than two years after DC Comics began selling digital versions of its own comics on the same day as print, the superhero publisher announced two new digital comics formats: DC2, which will feature “dynamic artwork” that unfolds as the reader taps on the screen, and DC2 Multiverse, a choose-your-own-path format that will allow users to make decisions at key points that will unlock different storylines.
via DC Announces Choose-Your-Own-Path Digital Comics | Underwire | Wired.com.
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Random House, the home of 50 Shades of Grey and The Da Vinci Code, has extended part of its publishing empire into the world of games with The Black Crown Project, a story-based online game based on a suitcase by first-time author Rob Sherman.
via 50 Web-Compliant Shades: With Black Crown, Random House Gets Into Games – Forbes.
I enjoy immersive RPG, puzzle and mystery games. This project is creative and looks interesting. I think the website could use some work…some of the text is too small/fuzzy. It has the feel of the cold war…typewritten messages, gas masks, stained green backgrounds, the content decidedly weird, dreary and at times gruesome/offensive. I think this game would attract those who like the Bioshock and Metal Gear Solid series (n.b. it is a story-based game NOT a FPS game) but it’s not for me.
From the website: “The experience is free-to-play, with opportunities for eager users to make micropayments to unlock story strands, expedite the narrative and acquire items and status within the world.”
Amazon’s bid to make money off of independent works based on corporately owned entertainment calls into question how independent those works really ever were.
via Do Fans Really Own Fan Fiction? – Noah Berlatsky – The Atlantic
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Amazon Launches Fan Fiction Platform | PopWatch | EW.com – The Modern MLIS
Amazon is readying the launch of a new publishing platform called Kindle Worlds where writers will be able to publish and earn royalties from their fanfiction.
For now, fanfic writers are limited to submitting stories about only three TV shows: ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars, the CW’s Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl, which aired its series finale on the CW last December. Amazon Publishing has secured licenses for those three properties (all owned by Warner Bros.), though it expects to announce more licenses soon.
Most stories on the publishing platform will be priced between $0.99 and $3.99. More details about submission rules and royalty rates are on Amazon.com. Via ‘Vampire Diaries’ among shows licensed for Amazon fan fic platform | PopWatch | EW.com.
A unique pilot program to research book discovery and generate data on libraries supporting authors.
Sourcebooks and OverDrive are partnering on a pilot program that will allow library patrons worldwide the opportunity to read New York Times bestselling author Michael Malone’s acclaimed novel “The Four Corners of the Sky” in ebook format. The Big Library Read is a no cost program in which libraries worldwide promote from their lending catalog a single ebook to their patrons. In addition to creating a global “library book club,” it’s designed to generate data about the positive exposure and sales influence library ebook catalogs provide to authors and publishers. See the full article at Library eBooks: The Role of Libraries in the Book Discovery Process | Sourcebooks.com.
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OverDrive and Sourcebooks to Launch Ambitious Ebook Data Experiment | The Digital Shift
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