Web fiction

Penguin has just launched We Tell Stories, a series of online digital fiction, in collaboration with alternate reality game designers Six to Start. They’ve asked six authors to try to harness the capabilities of the Internet in the name of storytelling.

From the Penguin website:

Over six weeks writers including Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago.

The first story, Charles Cumming’s 21 Steps, is a thriller set in Google Maps. The text of the novel is gradually revealed in blurbs as you use Google Maps to track the footsteps of the protagonist, first through the streets of London, and then further afield.

Penguin offers sneak peeks

Penguin is now offering free downloads of the first chapter of many of its new releases, including titles such as Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans and Janet Evanovich’s Plum Lovin’.

Colin Brush, senior copywriter at Penguin, writes on the Penguin blog:

These days I will on no account buy a book unless I’ve read some of the writing within. No really. I don’t give a damn what the blurb writers – a pack of miserable, tricksy curs (I know, I live inside the head of one) – have written. Or what the FT thinks about it. Even what Martin Amis has penned on the matter. Sure, all those words – if they’re good – together with a decent cover have a great chance of getting the book off the 3-for-2 table and into my hands. But I want to get a taste of what’s within if I’m going to commit.

This is why you’ll find me at lunchtimes in bookshops, cracking open the covers and reading the first few pages of any old rubbish. If I’m going to devote some time to a book then I want to hear the author’s voice, I want an idea of what sort of story it is right from the start. Surprise me, thrill me, have me begging for more.

Which brings me to Penguin Tasters … New Tasters will be added as each title is published. Currently, we have 53 up there for you already.

This comes in the wake of just under 15,000 readers freeloading Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children, and is perhaps precipitated by the recent revelation that people tend to pay attention when things are free.