Publishing Perspectives has an interesting piece by Jan Bozarth, an author who has created a series of children’s books, “The Fairy Godmother Academy,” that are intended to be a “transmedia experience” from the very beginning. The article isn’t really too clear about what “transmedia” aspects are incorporated into the series, though the project’s website hosts do-it-yourself projects and activities and a recently-completed contest in which readers submitted their own dance videos.
The article does have some interesting insights into how girls feel about technology in general as opposed to what that technology can do for them. For me, though, the most fascinating part is in the last paragraph, in which Bozarth writes:
I am excited about the future for the creators and dreamers of the world. As a Transmedia artist I understand that pieces of my stories will be sewn together by threads of silicon, sound, paper, memory and space. I can’t really own them once they are assimilated into a culture that consumes ideas only to transform, transmute and re-create. My biggest audience may or may not be born yet but my hope is that they will someday dance, sing and write some version of my story and send it back to me in another form that hasn’t even been invented yet. What lives on is the re-creation.
So, her form of “transmedia” apparently means that she’s created a world that she actively wants her readers to live in, even to the point of “danc[ing], sing[ing], and writ[ing]” their own fanfic and sending it to her. How different this is from the authors who are horrified that some fanfic writer might dare mess with their beloved creations!
