Story-Telling in a New Format

Publishers and writers are trying to find new ways to reach the reading public. You’ve most likely heard about publishing via cellphone. I even blogged about it.

Now a publisher is trying something new and, to me anyway, interesting – publishing via Google Maps.

Say what?

Leave it to the Brits to come up with this one.

ReadWriteWeb had an article on the thriller, The 21 Steps, being published by Penguin in conjunction with Google Maps. You navigate around the map to read the chapters.

Booklist’s Keir Graff wrote:

... it can be fun to look at a map and imagine what the places really look like, but here, the Google satellite view just made me frustrated because I wanted to see what the place really looks like at street level and inside the buildings.

I believe I’d have to agree with Graff. On the other hand, have any of you tried out MapJack? It’s currently available only in limited cities, but you get an on-the-street view. That would be much better. Someone real inventive could take it even further and do inside photography so that it would be closer to a movie, except not live action and clickable so that readers could come and go and read at their leisure.