New Fiction Formats

Flash Fiction, Digital Shorts and Singles, Build-Your-Own Adventure, Transmedia, Crowd-Sourced fiction and more are genres that are quickly shaking up traditional publishing models. Readers are turning to instant fiction enhanced by video, audio and multiple, shifting endings, as well as embracing digital novels that allow readers to interject their own profiles and story lines; the world of traditional literature is changing. Crowd-sourced websites like InkPop and Figment as well as sites like Byliner and Atavist have made non-traditional fiction formats increasingly popular. In this course, we will explore how these formats are sourced and edited as well as their ultimate profitability and viability. How do publishers achieve scale with such relatively low-priced products? How do subscriptions models serve these formats and what other non-traditional sales and distribution models are publishers deploying to reach the marketplace? What is the crossover market and how best to reach it? What is the technology that powers these formats? Through an exploration of these new formats, students will gain a broader understanding of new markets and how to integrate them into more mainstream publishing models.