Creative Writing in Video Games

I first started experimenting with creative writing by inviting a few friends over for a creative writing session. The results of our writings led me to believe our method of writing can be capitalized on by video games. Furthermore, the video game medium has many more creative writing applications that encourage writing and may make the writing process more fun for those not particularly driven to write.

What my friends and I did was to have someone come up with a writing prompt. Then, we all took about 10 minutes to write on whatever the person’s idea was. Finally, we arranged everyone’s work together and read our disparate writings as one continuous story. We would come up with transition phrases between our individual pieces to make things flow, or we started with an idea that allowed the pieces to maintain relative cohesion with one another.

Hilarity ensued as our works coincided in the worst ways possible. Video games can cultivate and allow for similar group creative writing processes. The game, Storium, entails a narrator creating an overarching story and guiding players through the scenes. However, players also contribute to the writing and direction of the story.

The tutorial of Storium showcases how the narrator writes out a scene, and the players are then forced to respond. Each player’s character has specific traits and abilities that guide the writing. For example, in the tutorial you are ambushed by wolves. The other players all perform badly due to their character flaws, but your character finds a solution to the situation due to their quick thinking and survival experience. Since you caused a good outcome to occur, you get to write what happens next while also getting to include a positive benefit for your team. Furthermore, each other player’s responses were entirely written out by the players themselves as the situation progressed. The narrator then responds to the player’s decision making and continues to guide the story along.

Storium is an excellent example of how video games can operate as a platform for creative writing that brings people together in a fun and collaborative writing experience. Once the story is done, you and your friends have a complete story made from scratch.

The video game, NieR: Automata^TM developed by Square Enix, PlatinumGames Inc., also provides an example of how games can encourage and provide a space for creative writing. In NieR: Automata^TM you play as an android, and whenever you die your identity can live on by placing you into a different body; however, your dead body is still on the Earth. Upon death, the game allows you to leave a message on your corpse by stringing together a few catalogued words and phrases into an intelligible message.

If you are playing while connected to the internet, then other players online can find and utilize your corpse for loot; furthermore, they also get to read your message which can be quite poetic. For example, one possible death message is: “A vengeful girl was distracted by a flower on a tower smiled upon by angels.” Sometimes, the meanings have absolutely no context, but nonetheless encourage creative thought and poetic writing.

NieR: Automata^TM’s death messages exemplify how video games can operate as a forum, platform, or medium through which players can publish their creative writing online. Furthermore, the creative writing experience of Storium and NieR: Automata^TM always entails a community participating in the creation of your writing or interacting with it in a fun and unique way.

Perhaps the most fun writing experiences I had in video games were through MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games); in particular, World of Warcraft developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Mabinogi developed by NEXON Korea Corps. My experiences in World of Warcraft can hardly be considered writing, but the fun of playing on a role-playing server with a guild full of people resulted in some of the most fantastic and fun to play through stories I have participated in. Games like World of Warcraft that allow players a lot of creative freedom can cultivate a lot of interesting creative writing stories that are fun to play through.

Mabinogi affords players the experience of being able to compose and play music through the video game. I didn’t understand how to utilize this feature to create my own works, but I could copy-paste other people’s compositions from other websites into my in-game scroll and then play music on whatever instrument my character could get their hands on. Oftentimes, I would end up having a group of fellow players with all our various instruments showing off anime soundtracks we had recreated in the video game. I was always impressed when someone had created their own music.

Experiences like the ones offered in Mabinogi allow players to literally play through the creative writing process, and then share their creations with other people in group sessions where everyone’s avatar gathers, reads, and recites. Oftentimes, MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games can function as forums for the avatars to meet in and discuss their writing among themselves.

My first experience with creative writing in a video game was not from within a game that allowed me to share my work with other players though. I remember playing my Pokémon Sapphire Version – developed by Game Freak – on my Game Boy Advance SP and being prompted to write a short statement by a news crew. After giving them a statement, I could then interact with a T.V. in game where a reporter would regurgitate my lines back at me like I was a celebrity. The ability to modify a game through creative writing was amazing.

I believe that video games that incorporate creative writing in interesting ways can inspire, cultivate, and allow players to even publish their creative works online. Furthermore, video games are a prime medium through which community writing can be experienced. I have not seen many video games that incorporate creative writing by the player’s in-game, but when I do, they’re a blast! There’s nothing like looting an android corpse and being rewarded with a hilarious quote written by a fellow player.

Sell Yourself First

Self-publishing digital content can grow to be an incredibly lucrative business. Although individuals might feel like it is easier to publish their work, rather than dealing with big businesses and the possibility of rejection letters, that means the work falls on the writer’s shoulders.

But the work of self-publishing does not have to be daunting. With proper preparation, publishing the individual’s work can be incredibly rewarding. Self-publishers have to consider everything that any company would when marketing a book or any other content.

Authors who make content that might not be picked up by larger publishers can find an income from self-publishing and marketing themselves and their writing. The author can find an alternate route, through digital publishing, that is not readily available to print publishers.

Effective self-publishers should begin marketing their content before the content is even complete. At this point, they are marketing themselves, and perhaps some previous writing they have done. For those without previous writing, they are marketing themselves as an author.

YouTube has become one of the tools of marketing. A community of “BookTubers” exists on YouTube that discusses books with their fans, and some are currently working on projects.

Popular “BookTuber” Savannah Brown, with roughly half a million subscribers, recently posted a video about how her self-published book of poetry sold 20,000 copies. For the past five years, on and off, she has been able to posts poetry videos. Then for two years, she has been posting various snippets of the writing process and has accumulated a following that would go on to purchase her books. Although she did not digitally publish, she self-published to Amazon through their print on demand service (copies of her book are printed only when they are bought).

The service she uses for print on demand is Kindle Direct Publishing, which allows anyone to publish their book with Amazon freely. Writers can “earn up to 70% royalty on Kindle eBook and 60% on paperback sales.”

Brown talks openly about pricing, especially regarding her first attempt to publish her book of poetry with a small publishing company that she worked directly with, and it adds up to roughly $1,000. However, through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, the fees are minimal until they take a 30% royalty fee.

However, there are plenty of platforms to self-publish on. Brown talks about building an audience so that new writers are not throwing a book into the void of these platforms.

She expresses how she had garnered a following through YouTube long before she ever published her first book. She states how people can develop a following on Instagram. With social media, a single author can reach millions of people and is the most effective way to build an audience when self-publishing.

Building an audience is slow-going, even with an interesting novel idea. In some cases, it requires that the author goes viral in some meaningful way so that an influx of people go to their social media.

Digital publishing expert David Gaughran talks about:”

a completely different approach to marketing is emerging, based on a constant drip approach, heavy on email marketing, big on lead-gen ads, adopting a ‘micro-targeting’ approach to finding readers.

Email marketing allows authors to develop a loyal audience. Emails go directly to the audience, rather than posting exclusively on social media and hoping they will come across it. Blogging can be another effective way of garnering an audience, especially because your readers already enjoy reading lengthy posts. Typically, bloggers will have a pop-up on their website, inviting people to sign up for their email subscription.

Perhaps the most important part of social media marketing is engaging with your audience. Depending on the author and the genre, they will have to create an audience that is most likely to be drawn to their writing. For young adult novelists, their audience might be found more on Instagram or Snapchat. Something more niche, like magical realism, might find an audience in blogging and advertising on all social media, including Facebook pages.

Advertising is another important step in marketing. Advertisements cost per day, and the cost increases based on how long it will run and how many users the ad will reach — all of the marketing for a novel starts with the individual advertising themselves and their social media. Facebook or Instagram are payable platforms to broadcast a post or photograph to the rest of its users.

Once an author has developed a loyal audience self-publishing a book does not seem nearly as daunting. If Properly done, the audience will enjoy the author and the work they have previously read and more than willing to buy the book.

Many of these steps can be repeated and continued to grow a larger following and sell more books after you have already published your book. With curating a following on social media comes more opportunities for cash flow, more eyes on the individual and their work. The possibilities are endless, and, with self-publishing, they are all in your hands.

Used E-books for Sale

When customers buy traditional print books, they expect to be able to use the book however they please. When that customer buys a book they can sell, trade, or give it away because they own the product. E-books are different in this aspect, though. When a customer buys an e-book, they do not own the product. Rather, they own the licensing to use the book, and the licensing agreement usually states that customers cannot sell or trade the e-book.

Amazon’s licensing agreement states,

Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove or modify any proprietary notices or labels on the Kindle Content. In addition, you may not attempt to bypass, modify, defeat, or otherwise circumvent any digital rights management system or other content protection or features used as part of the Service.

The rules outlined in this agreement might confuse some users or make them feel unsettled about their purchase. However, some changes may arise in the world of e-books, soon. A few years ago, rumors that Amazon and Apple were looking to change their licensing agreements began to circulate. These changes would allow e-book “owners” to resell their used e-books.

While Amazon and Apple have both applied for patents concerning e-book resale, it has been about three years since there have been any advancements surrounding the issue. This time gap could mean that Amazon has completely done away with the idea, or that this new feature could be right around the corner. This article aims to deep dive into what this theoretical change would mean for e-book readers and publishers.

How Would It Work?

What makes reselling traditional print easy is its simple nature. The seller resells the book to a buyer and when the buyer gives the seller money in return for the book, the seller then no longer owns the book. If the resale of e-books becomes possible, the reselling process will be slightly different because buyers do not actually own the e-books.

The resale of e-books would require an e-book owner to sell the license to use the book to another reader. Selling the license to the material means they then give up their rights to use the e-book. This transfer of rights is made possible through digital rights management, or DRM.

In my previous article Is DRM For You?, (Links to an external site.) “Digital rights management controls not only when the customer can use the product, but also how the product is used.” Once the seller resells their e-book, they will no longer be able to view the book because of DRM.

Possible Issues

To put it simply, e-books are essentially one unified code that creates pages readers can view on electronic devices. Since there is not a new code for each copy of a particular book, reselling e-books would mean that there needs to be something that identifies each specific book. For example, every print book has an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). According to the International ISBN Agency, “An ISBN is essentially a product identifier used by publishers, booksellers, libraries, internet retailers and other supply chain participants for ordering, listing, sales records and stock control purposes. The ISBN identifies the registrant as well as the specific title, edition and format.”

If it is made possible for readers to resell their e-books, there must be something created to identify each specific e-book. If this identification doesn’t exist, keeping up with e-book piracy will be a much more difficult, if not impossible, task.

When a reader resells a physical book, there are a few factors that affect the price at which it will be sold. For example, the publishing year of a book and its current condition can determine its value. Since e-books are digital, the condition of the book will never be an issue. David Pogue (Links to an external site.) of The New York Times writes,

Turns out material degradation isn’t just a fond side effect of book resales. It’s essential. It’s what ensures that the resale price matches the diminishing value of the product. If every copy is perfect, the whole thing breaks down. With unlimited e-book sales, every book’s price would eventually drop to a penny.

With the patents proposed by Amazon and Apple, publishers may be able to set a limit to the amount of times one copy of an e-book can be resold in order to help prevent this “one-penny problem (Links to an external site.).” According to Pogue,

Both proposals suggest that publishers could also limit the number of times a digital item can be resold: ‘A threshold may limit how many times a used digital object may be permissibly moved to another personalized data store, how many downloads (if any) may occur before transfer is restricted, etc.,’ says Amazon’s patent. ‘These thresholds help to maintain scarcity of digital objects in the marketplace.’

It is also possible that companies like Amazon and Apple would seek to take a percentage of the money made from the reselling of an e-book, which is similar to how Amazon takes a percentage of a textbook sold on their Amazon Textbook section.

This raises concerns with authors and publishers because they do not make a profit when their physical books are resold, so what then gives these companies the right to make money from digital resales? The control these companies currently have over e-book buyers and the control they could have with a new e-book resale patent could potentially be dangerous for the e-book community.

The idea of reselling digital property is a new frontier and, while rumors of possible e-book resales have died down in recent years, users cannot help but wonder what companies such as Amazon and Apple have in store for the future of buying and selling e-books.

It’s Time to Write

Graduate school can be a major stressor to students looking to apply. Between trying to pick the perfect university to sacrifice your time and money to and making sure you’re qualified to do so, the application process can be overwhelming. Students can add that little extra splash of uniqueness to their graduate applications by creating a well-developed resume that offers interesting, published materials. Such an addition is beneficial to both the student’s application and their personal sanity.

Why being published early matters

Being “published” seems like an impossible step for graduated students. It’s overwhelming even after you spend years honing your writing skills. When we think publication, our brains seem to automatically lean towards “traditional publishing” or “when a publisher offers the author a contract and, in turn, prints, publishes, and sells your book through booksellers and other retailers. The publisher essentially buys the right to publish your book and pays you royalties (Links to an external site.) from the sales” (Writer’s Digest Shop (Links to an external site.)).

While having an entire novel on your resume isn’t necessary for college applications, having published a couple articles can elevate your application. As Academical (Links to an external site.) states:

Publishing papers at the undergrad level is in many ways a bonus, a way of showing that you were able to squeeze out one more accomplishment in addition to your solid grades and extracurriculars. Having published can, however, tilt the balance in your favor when committees have to choose between two equally deserving candidates.

Academical goes on to include a few other things that can boost your resume such as working in a job in your industry, working a job in general, or volunteering with an organization that interests you.

For students who are looking to add published works to their resumes, TopTier Admissions (Links to an external site.) provides a relevant list of tips:

“Check out your competition and see how others do it” by visiting undergraduate research conferences at nearby universities.
“Review the types of journals that typically accept submissions from undergraduates or working professionals pre-grad school.” Bernard Becker Medical Library (Links to an external site.) provides a list of websites that are great tools for finding the perfect journal for your paper.
“Google ‘Call for Submissions’ and then type a keyword that links to your preferred field.”
“Peruse UPenn’s massive list of conferences (Links to an external site.) seeking abstract submissions for presentations (a great place to start) AND journals seeking paper submissions, AND books seeking chapter submissions.”

While it’s not necessary to publish your work to get into your college of choice, it can be a major booster to committees looking over applications. So, how does one actually get published?

Literary Magazines

Literary magazines, which commonly publish short fiction or poetry, are a great place for creative writers to start sending their works. Each magazine has a unique voice and viewpoint. Some publish online only while others offer print and online publications, so it’s important to look into a magazine before submitting a work.

Reedsy (Links to an external site.) offers readers a list of the 100+ best literary magazines of 2019, listing both the magazines name, submission fee, publication frequency, and submission guidelines.

For example, n+1 (Links to an external site.) is a “print & online magazine” that publishes new fiction, essays, criticism, and translations. The submission fee is $0 and students looking to submit have three chances a year to be published in the magazine. According to the publication’s general statement:

Our editorial mission is to encourage writers, new and established, to take themselves as seriously as possible — to write with as much energy and daring as possible, and to connect their own deepest concerns with the broader social and political environment; that is, to write, while it happens, a history of the present day. We welcome submissions from all writers.

If n+1 isn’t the magazine for you, Reedsy has compiled 102 other literary magazines. Options include magazines that publish “works that highlight cracks in society’s masonry” like frak\ture, to the Tampa Review that publishes “current art and writing from Florida and the world.”

Non-Literary Magazine/Website Publishing

The Write Life’s list of “19 Websites and Magazines That Want to Publish Your Personal Essays (Links to an external site.)” helps students looking to publish more non-fiction or non-literary works.

Some of the websites and magazines showcased are the following:

The Boston Globe, whose Connections section “seeks 650-word first-person essays on relationships of any kind.” Submissions should be sent to magazine@globe.com “with ‘query’ in the subject line.”
ExtraCrispy, which offers writers interested in “breakfast, brunch, or the culture of mornings” the opportunity to send their works to submissions@extracrispy.com.
Kveller is a “Jewish parenting site” which publishes articles such as B.J. Epstein’s piece “How I’m Trying to Teach Charity to My Toddler (Links to an external site.).” Those looking to submit should send “a brief bio, contact information, and your complete original blog post” to submissions@kveller.com “with ‘submission’ somewhere in the subject line.”
Skirt Magazine, a publication that is “all about women – their work, their play, families, creativity, style, health and wealth, bodies and souls” says to “email your pitch, a resume, links to published works to submissions@skirt.com.”
The Penny Hoarder, a “personal-finance website welcomes submissions that discuss ways to make or save money,” offers payment for articles between 700 and 900 words. For those looking to submit, the publication’s guidelines are simple and easy to follow.

Self-Publication

For students who have been working on a novel or other large body of work, self-publication is a viable option. While traditional publication relies on a publisher and a contract, self-publication has a variety of different publishing models (Links to an external site.) that range from “print-on-demand” publishing (where writers “use your own money to produce books one at a time through a company”) to “self-publishing” (where “you pay to produce, market, distribute and warehouse the book”).

Self-publishing creates a lot of work for the writer as the expenses (and at times the marketing and distribution) rely almost entirely on the writer. However, it also allows for more control over the published work and the ability to keep all the rights and profit. For an example of a student-written, self-published piece, read Hero by Slay James (Links to an external site.).

Aspiring writers and grad-school applicants have no reason not to take the chance to expand your resume with published works. So, take a seat, pick a topic, and start writing.

Google AMP for Digital Publishers

Slow mobile pages are incredibly unappealing for users. The desire to produce a better mobile experience prompted digital publishers to use Google AMP. The use of this also encouraged user traffic to their sites. According to “What Publishers Need to Know about Google AMP” by Ellen Harvey, Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is “an open source initiative with the goal of speeding up the mobile web”. Google AMP allows users to rapidly get the content they want. For digital publishers, keeping track of how Google AMP affects “their SEO, ad earnings, and user experiences” can determine their future success.

Since its launch in February of 2016, Google AMP has transformed how search engines and other publishing websites function on the mobile web. In recent years, smartphones and tablets are the go-to devices for viewing content. Rather than have a separate app for users to download, Google opted to create a more “quick user-friendly way“.

Functions of Google AMP

The sole purpose of Google AMP is to make accessing mobile web pages faster. A web page that has implemented AMP will have all the basic information a user would need. Carlos Alonso, writer of “Google AMP for Publishers: What You Need to Know”, explains the AMP process:

AMP HTML is a subset of HTML. It reduces the number of elements you can use while adding some new ones.
AMP JS is a Javascript framework focused on handling and loading resources. No other Javascript libraries are allowed in AMP.
AMP Content Delivery Network is an optional element that you can use to deliver your content even faster thanks to its cache.
CSS is also limited to certain elements.

Essentially, there is a trade-off “between flexibility and speed” when it comes to elaborate design on the mobile web page. Google AMP provides the bare-bone functions for users to view their content.

Revenue Gain

Digital publishers aim to increase revenue by using Google AMP. In “Google AMP and the Publishing Industry: What Happens Next?”, Lydia Gilbertson explains:

“Digital Publishing has been struggling to find a way to better monetize its industry since it became more common for its users to be found online than reading a magazine….Facebook and Google digital advertising account for 77 percent of the total growth in ad spend in 2015 and the gap is only growing. In response, many digital publishers have begun placing a heavy emphasis on their native advertising efforts.”

Digital publishers need platforms such as Google for their content to be seen, and in turn the platforms need users to continue regular interaction with them. Consequently, Google AMP has attempted to create a mutual partnership “to make it even more appealing for publishing sites to focus their energy on making content available on their platforms.”

Obtaining revenue is both a pro and con of Google AMP, due to several factors enabling or hindering it. The flexibility of Google AMP allows ads to be placed on mobile web pages to encourage users to click on them. Alonso states:

“AMP supports a wide range of ad formats and technologies, and more than 150 ad networks support integration with AMP pages. AMP also supports paywalls and provides an accessible framework to regulate access to content for subscribers, metered users and anonymous users.”

However, technical limitations on the number of ads on a page can cause a deficit. A few ways to combat this drawback is to place ads on both AMP and non-AMP pages, ads themselves can be AMP pages, and completely avoiding heavy ads can lead to a better experience.

Pros of Google AMP

First and foremost, the speed of a mobile web page encourages users to continue interacting with a publisher’s website. Faster loading pages show the necessary content that will keep users interested. Due to the key content loading first, users are less likely to “bounce.”

According to Alonso, “There is a direct correlation between implementing AMP and an increase in organic traffic.” By users clicking onto publishers’ sites, the overall user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) is enhanced. The increase in online traffic can be attributed to the fact that Google supports publishers who also support them.

Similarly, Google rankings push publishers to implement AMP to gain more visibility. Of course, Google will encourage its own designs; therefore, publishers who support Google AMP will be placed at the top of “rich results in Google and mobile search.”

Cons of Google AMP

Despite the innovative technicalities of Google AMP, drawbacks were likely to arise. The basic formatting of the AMP page removes the original version of the page. AMP is essentially a plugin that does not fall under the publisher’s website. The AMP plugin will affect the SEO based on the “different cache and different notation on the website“.

Likewise, there will be considerable variation between the display on the desktop and on the mobile version. Users may see the content as completely different. Having content suited for Google AMP is necessary and having bad content can cost publishers the users of their sites. Basically, Google directly affects the mobile sites. Incorrectly implementing Google AMP or experimenting with the Google algorithm may cause problems because AMP is still relatively new.

Google AMP will favor publishers’ sites that directly correspond with their platform or are more established. New digital publishers will be overlooked and will not have their content seen. Similarly, designs on custom sites are not being placed on the site. Gilberston states:

“Many publishers are finding that parts of their brand are being lost within the platform. Some of the functionality, such as the inability to add a “read full story” buttons, which are often used to keep mobile users on a page, is another common complaint among publishers.”

Google AMP is an innovative platform that still has a few kinks to sort out. As the program continues to evolve, publishers will be able to have more liberty to do as they please.

Google AMP provides a unique experience for both users and digital publishers. Converting content, in the correct manner, will guarantee positive results in the digital publishing market. Although pros and cons exist, the publisher must decide whether Google AMP is worth delving into.

The Rise of #GirlPower

Women all around the world are demanding that their voices be heard and they continue overcoming obstacles and hardships due to their femininity. Digital publishing is opening doors to allow women a platform to express themselves and the issues they face.

Oprah Winfrey tweeted: “We are enough. We matter. We are NOT invisible. Girls around the world are having their say. This is the moment to listen — # GirlDeclaration.”

Feminism, as a movement, is a fight for equal rights. The campaign challenges the traditional assumptions of social roles for men and women. Through feminism, women feel empowered to have their voices be heard. The movement intends to demolish the hierarchy and create equality for everyone.

Today, feminism is a movement that defines, establishes, and desires to achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.

Feminism has gained an abundance of attention and revenue due to digital publishing. Feminists choose to publish online because it allows them to reach more readers than ever before. Through digital publishing, women can create and control their craft.

The platform allows women to take a stand on issues and topics that often are overlooked or unknown to other individuals. Digital publishing gives feminists a new platform to use their freedom of speech to empower and motivate women all around the world.

At one point in time, feminist bookstores were mainly where female-made publications were obtained. Female writers have always dealt with the issue of being muted, oversimplified or objectified. Today women writers have numerous more opportunities than they have ever had in the past.

According to Simone Wolff:

This Times article about indie authors who started for kindle and now run their own publishing houses — all of which, incidentally, are women — claims that only 30% of readers engage only with print publications. The rise of the eBook and the internet’s facilitation of the woman-centric literary community has even created new forms of book distribution and literary community-building.

E-books and Kobo have become an essential aspect of keeping feminist books relevant and flourishing.

E-books give female writers a more significant opportunity for past, present, and future publishers to project their books. Simone Wolff explains, “Emily Books is perhaps the first of its kind, a chimera-like entity that combines eBook store, book club, subscription, and publishing house, all to a decidedly-feminist end.”

Emily Books explores and praises the famous works of past and present female writers. According to the “How Digital Publishing Has Changed Feminist Writing”:

Emily Books is, essentially, an online feminist bookstore. It even hosts a book club of sorts, in its subscription service, which comes with access to a community forum. But unlike the websites of pre-existing feminist bookstores, which are strictly for commerce and tend to have a GeoCities feel, Emily is an exercise in feminist taste-making.

Emily Books is providing an innovative service necessary for the innovative ideas of the evolving feminist.

Women & Children First partnering with Kobo, a Canadian company that sells e-books and other digital paraphernalia, is the reason the company exists today. Kobo digitally stores many feminist texts; thus, Women & Children First becomes one of the go-to bookstore websites for searches dealing with feminism and queer or gender studies.

Women were once second-class citizens, and the effects of stereotypes and gender roles still exist. Because of the continuing effects, feminist books are more obtainable digitally through e-books, Kobo, and other electronic devices. According to The Rising Feminist Magazines You Need to Start Reading:

We are fortunate to have this category growing on our platform–especially with these incredibly talented women creating content that inspires and brings awareness to important issues like women’s empowerment. It is through that access that we can ensure awareness and manifest change.

Female writers have been able to build powerhouses due to their digital platform. Today, many female powerhouses exist, such as writers like J.K Rowling, Stephanie Meyer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood. Women all over the world are finding it easier to be heard every day through digital publishing.

Feminist presses allow women to empower themselves, whether they are in the workplace, at home, or in their everyday lives. Their publications provide the ability to connect with their readers on a deeper level. Digital publishing brings together voices that speak on educational, health, and social justice issues for women all around the world.

Digital publishing has been one platform that feminists have been able to adapt to their needs. Today many female powerhouses exist, such as writers like Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood. Through Digital publishing, feminist books, essays, magazines, and articles are easily obtainable electronically. Feminism has made a profound mark with the help of digital publishing and they are here to stay.

Interactive E-Books: Where Did They Come From, and Where Are They Going

Interactive e-books are taking the digital world by storm. However, while recent developments in electronic texts are exciting, the revolutionizing of book interaction is not new. Publish Drive explains,

Even if we don’t count coloring books, pop-ups and all kinds of hands-on books for kids, traditional printed books that allow the readers to interact or change the story some way or another have been around for a while now.

Interactive e-books are mimicking innovations made in interactive print publishing while also creating new features unique to the digital medium.

The new features of e-books increase audience engagement by including media that the reader can play with. Publish Drive continues, “Interactive ebooks come in two major forms: apps and enhanced ebooks.” Essentially the e-books are made for browsing through an app on the web, on a mobile device, or on a desktop, and the app supports the media.

The other option involves creating an ePub file that internally supports all the different media. “Books made this way are called enhanced ebooks, and offer a significant level of customizability. This includes easy to enlarge pictures, embedded video and audio, and excellent accessibility.”

Features of Enhanced E-books

Authors have a vast array of features they can choose to utilize in their interactive e-books. Videos, animations, and voice-overs are popular inclusions. For visual aids, companies like Pearson use interactive diagrams with pop-up labels and definitions, changing infographics, responsive maps, calculators, and other activities that promote visual learning and engagement.

The most salient features though, include supported activities that can usually be found in print books as well. Features such as quizzes, word searches, comprehension activities, and checklists that e-books can generate and check. No more looking up the answers in a guide or waiting for class reviews; the books can do it all on their own.

Two main factors limit the types and volume of additional media that the author can put in their e-books: copyright restrictions and file size restrictions. If copyright prevents the inclusion of videos and other media, then try embedding them. If they block embedding, then link.

Amazon charges a “delivery fee” for some sales based on the size of the e-book, so authors working with them should be aware of that. As Kotobee says, “Otherwise, the main concern with a large file size is happy readers.” Audiences will tolerate large file, i.e. time consuming, downloads for important texts like academic textbooks much more than pleasure texts like novels.

Examples of Enhanced E-books

The interactive e-books on the market typically fall into three categories: academic texts, adult texts, and children’s books.

According to Iltifat Husain, MD, the most interactive textbook on the market is Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology. The book features pop-up definitions, interactive label diagrams, surgery videos, and extensive annotation capabilities. Pearson’s Biology and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Modern Chemistry also rank pretty high for number of downloads but lack elegance, says Alex Reinhart.

The adult-oriented interactive e-books fit several different genres; novels like The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins and Do or Die by Clark Kokich do well on the market. The most promising entertainment genre though appears to be cookbooks. For example, Look&Cook is an interactive cookbook that includes the usual step-by-step instructions along with voiceover instructions, built-in timers for recipe steps, video tutorials, and emailed shopping lists.

Children’s books typically feature animations and background music like the ones in Two Worlds, One Child’s Heart by Vered Kaminsky and Sparklify the Earth by Sandra Rose Gunn, which Publish Drive’s blog promotes.

Platforms for the Creation and Distribution of Interactive E-Books

Not all interactive e-books have to be coded by hand though. Kotobee offers a platform specifically geared to enhanced text creation through widgets. Flip PDF does the same thing and enables PDF-usable for the initial upload. Apple’s iBook Author, Aquafadas, PubCoder, Atavist, Calibre, and Sigil all offer the same capabilities. Most platforms that facilitate e-book creation will enable enhanced e-books. Platforms for distribution are a different story, though.

Two things determine access to interactive e-books: the device and the distributor. For example, Amazon supports enhanced texts, but their Kindles do not. Kobo tablets support enhanced texts, but leave their apps and other devices lacking. Google Play Books does not support interactive e-books, but Apple iBooks does. Consequently, authors and publishers bear the responsibility of knowing what platform the audience will use.

Success for Interactive Iterations of E-Books

Interactive texts continue to climb the ranks for B2B publishers, students, and casual readers. Map Systems India explains that for students an enhanced e-book “helps them to participate in the learning process, increasing their activities on the platform. For instance, you need not explain them the procedure of completing a task.”

Kitaboo published an article that details all the ways interactive texts surpass regular e-books such as being easier to update and revise. Furthermore, interactive texts provide: more accessibility to readers who may struggle to read a standard e-book; the ability to “link content to additional resources;” and, “Content creators/publishers/institutes/enterprises can set up an assessment for post learning evaluation and even need analysis.”

Kitaboo also claims,

Through the functionalities of interactive eBooks, creators can embed multimedia which makes the content contextually relevant and easier to relate with. Integrating technologies give students an opportunity to learn by viewing 3D models. This adds a layer of information over reality to enhance the learning experience.

Implications for the Industry

Enhanced e-books appear to be here to stay. Snap App says, “This sustained popularity means static ebooks are only going to become more saturated, and readers more numb to them.” Only recently have companies begun to understand how important their digital content is. Reinhart complained about the sloppiness of the e-books publishers are putting out when he stated:

It seems that textbook publishers are only willing to invest effort in multimedia, animations, and interactivity for big intro books—books which will sell tens of thousands of copies to bored students who will generally avoid reading them.

Consequently, good interactive e-books may be far and few between for now, but the ones coming in the future should be truly revolutionary.

How Digital Has Affected Script Writing

There are three definitions that come to mind when using the word “script”, first the word is often used in the place of prescription, when referring to doctor prescribed medications. Second the word script is used by computer programmers and web designers referring to a list of commands executed by programs of scripting engines used to generate Web Pages and automated computer responses. Lastly the word script is short for all the details of a screenplay for film, television or video game. It entails everything from movements, dialogues to expressions and tonal quality and the writer’s vision. This will be the version of script we will be referring to in this article.

When we think of a screenplay or reading a script at a table read (when actors sit around a table and practice lines prior to any filming), we think only of the words on paper. Todays script writers must have an array of mental processes taking place simultaneously to consider when writing a script for any digital platform. This article will discuss some of the processes a writer needs to be aware of when working on a project.

Digital tools and technology have altered the process of the script writing process by making use of the interned and a multitude of edition tools. The Interned has allowed script writers to forward their work to potential cast members and fellow writers for peer review. There are online forums such as screencraft and scriptmother where writers can go for ideas and reviews from other writers and even collaborate with other talented writers thousands of miles away.

There has been an amazingly significant increase in the last decade in low budget digital cameras that have enabled low-budget films to produce some very good quality cinematography. The editing in post-production has cut film production by almost ½ the time of what it was when film was actually on film i.e. 35mm. If someone wants a grainy look of the 1970’s you can’t beat film, but you better budget in the cost of transferring your grainy film to a digital format running at a minimum of 4K. Script writers must take into account their vision and the cost effects of production.

Film also has other disadvantages over digital like it is impossible to re-use film. Once it is shot that image is there for good and can not be written over or recorded over. This means that a day of shooting must contain the footage the director is looking for or that day and the recourses consumed that day are of no use and bust be re-shot or that scene deleted from the final cut.
With digital multiple cameras can run the same shot at the exact same time all with different angles then seamlessly blended in post-production. This is not something the script writer is concerned with but should be able to corroborate with the director should a question arise.
When writing a script in the past it was an idea, a notebook and a pen. All scripts were hand delivered and when collaboration with other writers took place it was usually a meeting around a table over a couple of days or weeks. Today the script will transform from the pen and paper to a computer where it will then be forwarded to many different people for review with just a couple mouse clicks. Each person that collaborates on a project doesn’t even need to get out of bed to have their contribution noted.
A major downside for the film industry is that piracy of copyrighted material is significantly less expensive than original works. This has led to many lawsuits against peer-to-peer networks and individuals as a result of the copying and distribution of materials. Screenwriters should be cautious of whom they send their scripts to for review and have a legalities and copyrights in place to ensure their work remains their work. This is something screenplay writers didn’t worry about in the past because they could easily just take their scripts and notes and keep them.
With the rapid modifications of movies every year the industry has forced the script writer to become somewhat of an audio and video enthusiast as well because these aspects are incorporated into film, television, and video games. This is an ongoing process that evolves almost daily in some industries, one example is postproduction and the constant upgrades of tools and software which lead to continual training and production costs.
Editors in different countries can now edit film for quality, wording, and sound by accessing digitized media on a server and working in real time with other editors across the globe each specializing in a particular field to create a script that had never been dreamt of a decade ago. Digital archives are also easy to save and store. Pixar had an incident when creating Toy Story 2, where one of the animators almost deleted the entire film while he was working on it at his house. Thanks to digital and the ease of backups this multi-million-dollar catastrophe was avoided.
A script is now sent to an effects department so the team there can begin the process of laying out a blueprint for background work and special effects. The script writer needs to be very proficient in his or her description of what they are trying to convey in each scene. It is clear there has not been an area of screen writing that has not been affected by technology and the digital platform. The major impacts for pre-production stage have been script writing tools and the learning curve of the digital age.
Script writing is no longer just merely a dramatic array of words and method actors like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with The Wind. A script writer must envision the entire production and have the actor’s reactions and movements constantly on mind when writing. The screenplay writers in the future must have skillsets that far supersede that of even todays writers. Scripts have expounded to consume all aspects of the digital world. While the writer may not necessarily need to know how to apply the concepts of a green room effects and wire work coupled with a 3-D image of a bullet screaming past the actors ear, they must be able to envision the process to accurately convey this in the words they are writing.

Tasty Proves That You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Founded in 2015, Tasty is an online food blog with a global reach across the US, UK, and numerous European countries that is best known for its viral food videos of trendy, unique, and easy-to-follow recipes.

Buzzfeed, one of the leading digital media companies specializing in news and entertainment, originally published Tasty as an effort to expand its digitized content strategies to resonate with its millennial audience. Buzzfeed quickly learned that the fastest way to its online audience’s loyalty was through their stomachs. Within fifteen months of its creation, Tasty collected a staggering 1.7 billion views from its recipe videos and became the leading revenue generator for Buzzfeed.

Tasty’s success in the food blogging industry relies on making seemingly complex recipes simple and available to the average person. Itsfun and creative dishes continue to wet the appetite of an increasing number of millennial readers, providing them with a sense of culinary success previously offered only by professional chefs.

Ashley McCollum, Tasty’s former general manager and vice president, explained the reasons behind the company’s popular digital presence:

Our point of view is that 99% of food media is made by food professionals, but 99% of food is made by amateurs. So what is the [difference] between food media and real food? We think that massive gap between media and reality is what we’re filling. I think that’s why we’ve been so successful and why we have a lead in this emerging space.

By focusing on audience desires to be creative in the kitchen, Tasty continually expands the recipe index for its readers.

Some of the top Tasty recipes include Churro Ice Cream Bowls, Mozzarella-stuffed Slow Cooker Meatballs, and a Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. All of Tasty’s recipes come with a 60 second video, allowing the reader to fully immerse in the culinary side of digital content. Sliders Four Ways, its most popular recipe to date, has amassed over 200 million views on Facebook.

This unique approach to food blogging has positioned the brand ahead of its competitors as it consistently innovates its content to fit its consumer’s needs. McCollum told the New York Times :

Really what we’re seeing is how to make a business out of massive intellectual property that was built digital-first. It’s the same model as old-media networks—you make a movie that people love, and then you build a theme park and extend that to products and everything else.

Through this method, the brand has even established a leading position among the top 10 food pages on Facebook.

The brand’s proven success of folding in a standard recipe blog with a video has enabled it to expand past its original digital platform. Tasty took the unique step of reverse-publishing and expanded from digital content only to traditional print via cookbooks.

Its first cookbook, Tasty Latest and Greatest: Everything You Want to Cook Right Now , sold more than 100,000 copies in the first month of publication. Due to its outstanding success, Tasty soon dished out two additional cookbooks, as well as a Tasty-branded line of cookware at Walmart and a snazzy new seasonal subscription service with LG Electronics called LG Tasty Cookie Club.

The LG Tasty Cookie Club subscription service provides readers who have a sweet tooth with seasonal boxes of cookie baking kits. Each box contains pre-measured ingredients and baking tools that allow customers to easily recreate their favorite online recipes from the comfort of their own home. The box for the fall season includes The Pumpkin Spice & Everything Nice Cookie Kit, followed by The Ultimate Mini Gingerbread House Cookie Kit, which will roll into subscriber’s kitchens just in time for the holidays.

Tasty has also launched more niche-focused content in its foreign versions, including Proper Tasty for its British audience, and Tasty Miam for the French readers. Recipes include Hash Brown Benedict and Risotto Pissaladière. By incorporating foreign cuisine on its blog, Tasty adds a personal touch to its marketing strategies. As Buzzfeed’s CEO Jonah Peretti said, “We’re always thinking about not just generating traffic but reaching [our audience] in a real way.”

Tasty has raked in a lot of dough from this authentic approach, earning nearly $3 million in revenue from its viral recipes alone in 2018. Frank Cooper, Buzzfeed’s former chief marketing officer, talked about the success that comes from Tasty’s unique content, saying, “It taps into a simple truth: People love tasty foods and the kind of foods that remind them of their childhood, comfort food, or food that reminds them of an experience.”

Tasty’s digital strategy of combining traditional blogs with media content delivery has spiced up the digital publishing market focused on food. The brand provides its 500 million monthly viewers with virtually unlimited access to easy recipes, thanks to its multiple digital platforms.

Four short years ago, Buzzfeed launched Tasty as an online experiment, not realizing that it would rise to the top of revenue generation for its company. Since then, Tasty has certainly satisfied the internet’s insatiable appetite for food content by making simple and creative recipes available to online users everywhere.

Data Analysis for the Publishing World

The digital publishing environment has transformed into a business that requires authors and publishers to explore data capture tools to stay relevant. Kevin Petrie, Dan Potter, and Itamar Ankorion, authors of the free e-book Streaming Change Data Capture: A Foundation for Modern Date Architectures found on Qlik write:

Data is creating massive waves of change and giving rise to a new data-driven economy that is only beginning. Organizations in all industries are changing their business models to monetize data, understanding that doing so is critical to competition and even survival.

A good bit of the data analysis explored in this text focuses on big businesses, such as Ford or Fanatics. But digital publishing is a business in and of itself.

The data collected by big business matters for the small business entrepreneur as well; they need the same information to intelligently navigate the field. Although curated analyses such as these are difficult to access for the average Joe, one could take a single Google search and transform it into usable data easily.

Publishing Parameters

The content authors release should fill spaces that are most likely to host the author’s target audience; whether the author writes textbooks on Medieval literature or high fantasy fiction novels, each topic requires its own audience.

The audience’s age, profession, education, and interests form the foundations of publishers’ data analysis. All of these factors contribute to what each reader wants and where they will retrieve the content from. An academic audience might be less likely to search for textbooks for an e-reader but would rather search on Chegg Books, whereas high fantasy seekers might search Amazon or Barnes and Noble for these novels.

Keep in mind that publishing for specific e-readers (like the Kindle) isn’t smart either, though, seeing as “sales of e-reader devices are falling rapidly.” However, Amazon provides a free Kindle app for smartphones, and according to Derek Haines people are using their cell phones to read e-books more than ever. While e-reader sales decline, e-books continue to rise in popularity for this reason. Amazon’s e-reader might not be declining, but their free app is readily available for the few who might loyally continue using the device.

The Methods of Data Collection

Most publishing services provide a dashboard for screening published material’s visitors. Adobe’s Audience Manager also offers a popular data management service. Otherwise, a tracking pixel, or a graphic that tracks user behavior and other information, can be activated on the publisher’s website to gather this sort of data. Facebook also provides a way to create a pixel to add to the publisher’s website.

Minute details such as how the audience will read their e-books are important factors of data analysis. Given these findings, the author must consider font, type size, and other features that they otherwise would not have because their audience is more likely to be reading on a smartphone.

Uses for Data in Digital Publishing

In an interview between the head of Global Automated Monetization at Watson Advertising and eMarketer’s Ross Benes, they discussed how “few publishers have created new revenue lines out of their data, even though the digital publishing industry is struggling during a time when data is alleged to be the new oil” Rather than just selling the information to publisher’s advertising clients, as many already do, it should be used to strengthen their own business

SailThru provides guidance on how to use the 1^st party data that comes from the audience to create a better publishing business.

Develop ownership of an audience
Personalize content that people will pay for
Sell a better audience to advertisers
Use a subscription model

All of these ideas can be implemented at the self-publishing level and higher.

The collection of data is also beneficial for the consumer because the content they will receive will be more tailored to their interests. Consuming this content will be more worthwhile, worthy of precious time and money: both publisher and consumer benefit from this collection of data.

Proceeding with Data Incorporation

With Facebook’s recent data breach breaking headlines, it is in the user’s best interest to carefully vet the institutions privy to the collected materials. Along the lines of best practices, usually, publishers decide what to do with the data they receive from their audience.

They can easily put the information out onto the internet for any advertiser to purchase, but they should be selective with who the information is shared with and who it is purchased by so that the audience does not end up finding out that their information was spread on the internet and feel betrayed.

With these best practices and publishers can make data analysis into an incredible tool for identifying the biggest source of income. People want to feel like their money is serving them well, and investing it into a business that prioritizes things that interest them will make people feel better about spending their money on the publisher’s product and content.