With all of the audio and visual possibilities that the Internet offers, does it make sense that books are still mostly text, even when they appear online? Some authors apparently don't think so: For her new mystery/suspense novel Thy Will Be Done, British Columbia-based author Nicola Furlong and several colleagues decided to create a kind of amalgam of text, audio, video and still images called a "Quillr." In a sense, they have created their own TV-style adaptation of the novel.
At the website (http://www.hereendsthebeginning.com), readers/viewers can see the first five chapters laid out like a traditional online book, but with added audio, video and still photos that enhance the narrative. In one chapter, for example, music plays through an embedded audio player (although the sound can be turned on and off), and then a video clip shows actors portraying a pivotal scene in the novel. Furlong herself even appears in one scene as a secondary character.
Furlong says the idea for Quillr came from her friend and partner Glynne Turner, who also directed the video clips used in the "book" and composed the soundtrack and the audio clips used in the project. The production involved a single digital camera, Apple's iMovie and about a dozen actors. Access to the full version of the Quillr will cost $12.95, the author says, and the team is planning to produce a DVD version. She says they are also interested in working with other authors to create their own Quillrs.
Furlong's venture is similar to a multimedia effort that author Andrew Crofts came up with, in which he created a video "trailer" for his new book The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride. In the video (at http://www.steffimcbride.com), an actor - who happens to be Crofts's stepdaughter - acts out the first chapter of the book, using the text from the novel as dialogue. And in the late 1990s, author Scott Huelsman created a multimedia version of his novel Wizard Reborn with audio and video, which was sold as a CD and is now available online in several different versions.
For more details and links,
please see the Ingram 2.0 blog
at globetechnology.com.
