In this digital mashup age, traditional entertainment media is being continually remodeled and reinvented. As a result, anyone producing traditional media formats, books, for example, need to consider ways of remaining relevant in a world where boundaries between entertainment formats are becoming increasingly blurred.
While books in any format will always remain at the core of an author's work, authors must embrace the growing culture of mashup, meme and crossover in order to remain relevant, counter obscurity and be at the cutting edge of consumer-driven media preferences. Embracing this change goes far beyond attempts at platform-building via social media: it means reinventing what that platform actually consists of. No longer is it enough to cultivate readership through interaction. Instead, readership must be cultivated by creating alternative complementary content.
This notion of Polyauthorism, the re-positioning of authors to become producers, insists that contemporary authorship be constructed from more than just books: more than just words.
"If the internet is the new laboratory, then authors must become its new experimenters."
Consider, for example, sample chapters: where a portion of a book is made available online in the same way readers traditionally browse titles in a book shop. In this digital age it is not enough to provide a pdf or ebook sample. Entertainment consumption patterns have changed: mashup and crossover have become the norm, and the sample chapter must be reinvented to accomodate this.
Because the Velvet Paw of Asquith Novels are supported by a wealth of complementary media across multiple formats (a consequence of polyauthorism), their sample chapters will be presented in a new and innovative way: with scrolling text, excerpts from the Cinematic Audiobooks, ticker tapes, videobooks, Extractionist Artwork, character profiles, Self-Derogatory Advertisements, author interviews, presentations and book trailers, all blended together in unique video presentations:
Frankly, nothing can be more mashed up than that.
The first arrives in a week.
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