Transmedia: A New World of Opportunity for Authors and Publishers

By Javier Celaya

As a writer in the 21st century, I am rather curious as to the different opportunities transmedia storytelling has to offer in the process of creating a work. Which multimedia languages are the most appropriate in which to tell a story? What role do the various platforms play in creating a story? What is the production process like? What role does a publisher play in the entire process? How is a transmedia story marketed? How can the production costs be made profitable?

I have been reading all sorts of articles, blogs, studies and books in relation to this concept for several months. Although there are today more questions than answers on how transmedia will impact the book publishing sector, the objective of this article is to get a clearer picture of the challenges and business opportunities offered by the new world of transmedia to authors and book publishers…

via publishingperspectives.com

There’s a frequent misapprehension that “transmedia” is merely a kind of creative diversification. To invoke a finance term, authors aren’t merely “reducing risk by investing in a variety of assets” or, to be glib, creating those assets through risky reduction of a single creative narrative into other media. Transmedia is really all about creating complementary narratives in different media that culminate in a story world bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s like playing god but on deadline. It’s no wonder that terms like “story bible” are used in this trade. And “development hell.” Or, wait a minute… Are we all just toiling in some kind of transmedia Paradise Lost? Or is that transMiltonic? What studio did Lucifer go to?