If you are interested in ebooks, video on the web,and the question of how to (or not to) make things interactive, I think you'll find some useful content in this case study. And if you are writing as a profit making venture, you should be interested in these topics or risk being passed by.
DISNEY'S FIRST EBOOK ORIGINAL NOVEL
Disney is publishing its first ebook original novel, "Confessions of a High School Vampire: Birth." (Maybe just in time--can the vampire thing last more than another 15 minutes?)
It's based on a web series at Disney's Take180 web site, which launched in March, 2009. I'd never seen it, probably because I'm not in the target demographic. The subheading is "Awesome shows made with you. All 180 seconds or less." That reflects where a lot of things are going:
* short
* interactive
* geared to a young audience - in this case, judging by the generous amount of pink on the home page, mainly girls
The web show the ebook is based on is "I <3 Vampires" (I Heart/Love Vampires), apparently the most popular of their offerings. Other shows there include "ElectricSpoofaloo" (current episode: "LisaNova's Horny Handout"--relax, it's about rhinos) and "What Guys are Talking About."
HOW MANY EYEBALLS?
There have been 46 episodes of the vampire series so far and 13,769 people have registered at the site as fans. The number of views for the first episode is listed as 20,683, but only around 6,000 for many of the subsequent episodes.
For a Disney sponsored site, those numbers are not that impressive.
INTERACTIVE…OR NOT SO MUCH
You can join and put up a profile, take part in the forums, and leave comments on individual episodes. But how are the shows "Made with you"?
Most of the shows have challenges, asking you to answer a question.
For Big Screen Spoofaloo you can tell them what movie you'd like them to parody. When I looked, there were 75 submissions.
For the show with my favourite title, "Hollywood is Like High School With Money," you're invited to tell them about a rival you had at school. (83 submissions). I can't see how that's going to influence anything. Which is why there may be:
TROUBLE IN INTERACTIVE LAND
I snooped around on the forums, and one post, made in July of this year, suggests that the site found it too much effort to be truly interactive. The post says the person writing it no longer finds the site worth her time:
"What really ticked me off was the elimination of audience participation in favor of canned shows. The episodes became pre-recorded, and challenges weren't designed to influence the audience to submit ideas for the show, but rather to encourage editorial submissions surrounding a theme related to the show. The duration of these pre-produced episodes almost always breached 3 minutes (or 180 seconds), waving off the mission statement of Take180. T180 Studio's mission to produce shows with audience participation in episodes of 180 seconds or less was either forgotten or ignored.
"First Day" was the first series to do this, and its challenge asked viewers to share their terrible first-day-of-school experiences. Episodes were released every couple of days because there was no need to produce new episodes based off user input. The audience participation that once made Take180 so inviting made officially took leave."
There was no response to this post from the producers. Don't they bother to read the forums, or did they think the best way to deal with this objection was to ignore it? Neither option shows much commitment to interactivity.
The most active forum is called The Countdown Game, and the object is to start a post with the number 10,000 and then each new post contains the next number down. Usually that's all it contains, a number. As of this writing, they're down to 7721. Yes, they posted 2,279 times...it's goal-oriented behaviour but--never mind, they're teen-agers.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THIS PROJECT?
Without information that Disney isn't likely to release, like how much it costs to make these shows, how much revenue they bring in from ads and sales of DVDs, and how switching to a much less interactive mode affected the number of participants, it's hard to draw any firm conclusions. I won't let that stop me. My semi-educated guesses are:
* It's harder than it looks to make a show truly interactive--certainly more expensive. If you have to wait for reactions and ideas from the audience, you can't shoot a big batch of shows at the same time. I'm guessing that may have been the main reason they switched. It's also difficult to know how to use input anyway. For instance, I've always felt that letting people vote on the direction of a plot isn't very satisfying since probably about half the voters feel left out because their choice didn't win. Hey, it's just like elections…
* It's a challenge to get massive number of viewers to sites that don't have a broadcast component (especially if they aren't actually interactive)
* It may still be worth the effort of creating such a site because you may be able to recoup your investment with spin-off products--but of course this is easier if you are an entity like Disney, with deep pockets and a ready-made distribution system.
I'll continue to keep my eyes open for projects in this new media space--if you find any worth a look, let me know via jurgenwolff@gmail.com.
(Whether you're writing for new media or old, you can benefit from friendly guidance and support. One way to get it is to enrol in my online Writing Breakthrough Strategy program. It starts again in mid-January and you can find out all about it at http://www.writingbreakthroughstrategy.com)
