A new word has reached us ‘Webisodes’ which appear notto be chunks of a work so much as marketing extracts and new supplemental materials. Puffin is trialing "webisodes" on its, Spinebreakers.co.uk, teen site with the aim of engaging potential readers to a forthcoming title. Melvin Burgess' new title Sara's Face, will be the first webispode and go live on 21st January with new material being added at three day intervals. Some of the clips have been adapted from extracts from the book, while others feature new material from Melvin.
Only yesterday were we looking at a new service which created virtual entities that could be given personalities and fed background information so that they could become an automated 24 hour virtual person with whom anyone could chat and interact with. Soon we may be loging on to ask the likes of Sara about the book, her loves, dislikes and what she has been doing.
It is clear that with social sites and tools such as Second Life and others and technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence) we are potentially extending the interest and marketing pull from beyond the binding of the book.
