Originally posted at www.publishersweekly.com

By Sally Lodge

Seven teenagers with crippling secrets and phobias travel to an eerie, mysterious place in hopes of finding a cure in Dark Eden, a novel and multimedia app by Patrick Carman. Published by Katherine Tegen Books on November 1, this psychological thriller was launched with a fittingly fright-themed marketing campaign that involved a “Fear Test” for teens to assess the source of their fears. The multiple-choice test is available online as well as on a CD-ROM that was distributed—along with other branded giveaways—at such venues as haunted houses, corn mazes, family gaming centers, and bookstores during the Halloween season. Pre-pub buzz for the novel was also generated by a 20-site blog tour, on which Carman offered guest posts and sneak peeks of Dark Eden’s multimedia components.

Patrick Carman. Photo:
www.kimberlyink.com.

Carman, whose earlier projects combining print and digital content include Skeleton Creek and 3:15, notes that Dark Eden offers teens the chance to experience the story in two distinct ways. “The idea is to reach every kind of reader,” he explains. “The book itself is a straight read, with no technology involved. If another kind of reader wants to experience the story through the multimedia app, they can unlock journal entries, audio recordings, and videos that tell the entire story from beginning to end in a different format. It’s kind of like having the book and movie come out at the same time.” Dark Eden‘s digital components are compatible with the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android-enabled devices.

Released with an announced first printing of 100,000 copies, Dark Eden has been named a Winter 2011-2012 Kids’ Indie Next Pick. Katherine Tegen, the novel’s editor, calls the multimedia app’s combination of a game with short segments of text from the novel, “innovative and brilliant,” and the ideal way to snag today’s teens, who she notes “live on their phones. Teens who like to read—and teens who don’t—will be totally hooked by the app. Even though I know the story extremely well, every time I watch a segment of the app, I am totally transfixed by the multimedia experience of that same story.”

Branded banners were distributed to venues
nationwide, such as this haunted house in Seattle.

The publisher and Carman’s PC Studio joined forces to create what Tegen labels “the best viral campaign I’ve ever seen,” noting that the blog tour, organized by HarperCollins’s publicity department, resulted in “a stunning number of amazing blog reviews and online buzz.” She says that the haunted house partnerships and the Fear Test developed by PC Studio “like the app, employ real guerilla marketing tactics to reach teens where they live. Patrick deployed his ardent teen fans across the country to tag public places with “thefeartest.com” stickers. The teens were encouraged to take photos of their tags and five teens won prizes—signed books by Patrick—for the best photos.”

The promotional partnership with haunted houses and other Halloween-themed attractions enabled Carman and his team “to get the book in front of a lot of teens at one time,” he says. “Teens are really into haunted houses this time of year, and we pretty rapidly got a number of venues on board. It was a win-win situation, since we were able to draw teens into the world of Dark Eden, and the haunted houses were able to offer teens something that others were not.”

Two of the haunted houses that participated in the project are owned by Clear Channel Seattle, and each is sponsored by one of the company’s Seattle radio stations, KUBE 93 and 106.1 KISS FM. “Kids ages 13 to 15 make up the sweet spot demographically for these haunted houses, and that is right on the money in terms of Dark Eden’s target audience,” explains account executive Casey Anderson. “We integrated some pretty creative elements into our haunted houses, including stenciling scenes on the wall that related to the book. To pique curiosity for the book, we also handed out wrist bands and CDs, and ran some 15-second radio spots the last two weekends in October to tie it all together. It was a great strategy, and we feel good about the positive connection to reading.”

Fear Test stickers were sent to fans with instructions
to tag and photograph their handiwork.

Through these seasonal attractions and bookstores, 40,000 CD-ROMs featuring the Fear Test and some 100,000 wrist bands touting Dark Eden have been distributed to teens. Other giveaways include lanyards and bookmarks. HarperCollins, which has created a Web site for the novel, continues its marketing campaign throughout November with online consumer advertising for a total number of 2.4 million impressions, as well as mobile advertising at MillenialMedia.com.

Carman’s follow-up novel, Eve of Destruction, will be released by Katherine Tegen Books in May and will also have a multimedia app component. With its multimedia platform, this two-book series embodies Carman’s mission as author. “This orientation is crucial to me,” he says. “I’ve visited more than 1,400 schools, and of course there are always plenty of kids who read, but the percentage is not very high. If there is any way to throw kids a lifeline to reading, I am always looking to do that.”

Originally published at www.thedigitalshift.com

by Patrick Carman

Whenever I speak to a group of middle school students, I run the same simple test. I ask the audience to think about the day before I arrived. Only that one day. Then I have them count on their fingers each of the following things they did the day before I got there:

• Used a cell phone
• Used a personal device to listen to music (iPod Touch, smartphone, tablet, etc.)
• Watched TV
• Played a video game
• Went online

Then I ask if anyone in the audience can give me a high five.

What’s astonishing to me is the regularity with which I find at least 70 percent of the audience laughing and waving back at me, all five fingers splayed out so they’re sure I’ll notice (Who says girls don’t play video games? Farmville and other social games like it have made sure they do). When I ask for a high four, I’m getting better than 80 percent participation. Three fingers gets me to 99 percent.

I keep asking myself a question in these situations (I hope the librarians and teachers in the room are asking it, too): when these kids leave school, are they also reading every day? And if they are, how big would the reading slice of pie be compared to, say, posting on Facebook, listening to music, and texting their friends? I’m increasingly convinced that I’m staring at a pie where 90 percent of the slices are cut up into non-reading forms of entertainment and social media.

When I started touring in early 2003, the only people at middle schools who had cell phones were the adults. I had the advantage of being on the ground at hundreds of schools, day in and day out, at the beginning of a sea change: I could see the wave building and feel the power of what was about to crash onto school campuses. Today the vast majority of middle school students carry mobile devices, and not just phones; iPod Touches and laptops have also become commonplace among tweens and teens.

At some point—I think around 2007—I found myself standing in too many gymnasiums talking to kids who were spending far more time consuming entertainment through technology than they were reading. And the really big wave hadn’t even hit yet.

After years of serious contemplation on the road (and an entire set of Michelins for my Camry), an answer—at least my answer—began to form: stop trying so hard to stand out. It was a scary conclusion, one that would require a completely new way of thinking about what a book could be. What many ultra-wired kids needed was a pathway back to books. They needed someone to take two steps toward them before they could take one step in the direction of reading.

My “blending in” experiment began with Skeleton Creek, a project that started simply enough: I would make a book and a movie at the same time. I’d ask tweens and teens to read 20 pages, then I’d send them online to unlock a video that would deliver part of the story. Back and forth we’d go, nine times in total, and at the end they’d have read 200 pages.

“I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.”

I soon discovered that innovation is a messy business filled with long stretches of doubt, countless false starts, and a constant black cloud of indecision. There was no road map to follow, no guarantee that a story told this way would result in anything more than a pile of broken parts. All I could do was hold onto the same question at the start of every day and hope it would guide me to the right decisions:

What will make distracted kids turn more pages?

Well, I think I may have gotten a little bit lucky. I still believe the entire story could have gone off the rails at any moment (it sure felt that way right up to the end). But 10 million videos watched by over a million different kids has me convinced that we can win back lost readers if we make the critical decision to meet them halfway.

I’ve heard the same statement in one form or another from hundreds of different teachers and librarians when they talk about the emergence of multimedia books: kids who weren’t reading are reading again. They’re coming back.

But what are they coming back to? Is it reading or something else? To answer that question we need a definition for transmedia, a buzzword catching on across all entertainment media.

Transmedia, as I define it for the work I do in publishing, is a project that uses multiple platforms to create one seamless story through: the written word, video, audio diaries, illustrations, websites, apps, and social media. But transmedia is an evolving concept. It can just as easily describe a book series that’s been made into a movie or a TV show. Or maybe the series simply has a really cool website.

In case those of us in publishing are interested in how Hollywood defines it, I asked Nick Harris, co-head of media rights at ICM, the big talent agency. “Transmedia,” he responded, “must utilize different media to create a single universe in which multiple storylines and characters can exist and evolve for an interactive audience experience.”

While it may be a difficult thing to pin down, one thing’s for sure: transmedia by any reasonable definition will play a critical role in the future of books.

As a storyteller, I’m enjoying the move to less traditional methods of finding readers, in part because—I’ll be honest—it’s kind of fun doing creative stuff with other people. Writing words is a magical, solitary pursuit, but there’s a lot to be said for building a story in tandem with a director, actors, programmers, game designers, and artists.

So where does the path go from here? I’m happy to say it leads in many directions. More and more writers are starting to experiment with different ways of reaching into a wired world and reconnecting kids to books. The 39 Clues blends adventure, trading cards, and online games into a jet-fueled reading experience kids are embracing. That series alone has brought nine bestselling writers under the multimedia tent, including Rick Riordan. And notable authors like Jon Scieszka and Michael Grant have also created multimedia reading experiences that are picking up steam.

As for me, I’m actively forging ahead into more uncharted territory. With www.315stories.com I’m attempting to re-invent the short story for distracted readers. I’m asking young readers to listen, read, and watch in 15 minutes or less. Are they going to listen to a one-minute audio introduction? I think they will. Are they going to watch a spooky two-minute video at the end? Totally. But the story won’t make any sense if they don’t do the important part in the middle, which will involve reading for 10 to 12 minutes.

I’ve also just released Dark Eden, a traditional YA novel for teens who love a big, dark, paranormal world. But if they’d rather experience the same story in the form of a multimedia app, they have that option, too. The app version of Dark Eden tells the same story through words, maps, audio diaries, videos, and slide decks. Crazy? Probably. But I’m convinced we should be creating books for every kind of reader—traditional, ultra-wired, and everything in between.

I spend about half my time writing conventional novels, the other half exploring new ways to engage a different kind of reader. So I guess, in a sense, I’ve answered my own question.

Can reading make the top five every day for every kid?

It can if we spend a little less time trying to stand out and a little more blending in.

Author Information

Patrick Carman is the author of many acclaimed bestselling series for children and young adults, including Skeleton Creek, Trackers, Thirteen Days to Midnight, and Dark Eden.

I’m excited for the release of DARK EDEN today! Lots to explore and many ways to help me spread the word. Check out all the stuff!

Visit the website and share it with a friend: www.enterdarkeden.com

Take the fear test, it will show you what you’re really afraid of (seriously!) www.thefeartest.com

Join the Facebook fan site, updates daily: www.facebook.com/enterdarkeden

Order the book (author smiles!): www.enterdarkeden.com/get/book.php

And read the DARK EDEN interview below!

Come join me in DARK EDEN, where fear is the cure.

Patrick

Dark Eden Interview

How did the idea of DARK EDEN come about? Was there extensive research regarding the symptoms and emotions of teens going through the process of overcoming their phobias?

One of my best friends also works as a counselor for teens and adults. We were on a long drive, heading to Montana for some R and R on a river, and we got into a long conversation about the physiology of fear. Interesting things happen to us when we’re afraid beyond just ‘fight or flight’. That got me thinking about people with extreme fears who live otherwise ordinary lives, and how a villain could take advantage. For almost a year after that, every drive we took to a river included this topic. I had lists and lists of unusual phobias and fears, and we had some fascinating conversations.

Which character do you relate to most? Least?

I relate to Will Besting most, probably Kate Hollander the least. I grew up in Will’s kind of environment – a brother, a lot of video games, a fascination with music and sound. And I, too, would have rather watched than participated in the things that went down at Fort Eden. With Kate, I’m just not an alpha personality. I’ve been around people like that my entire life (haven’t we all) so I understand how they operate when they enter a room. But it’s not generally the company I keep, so she was a tough one to work out.

What fears and phobias, if any, did you have when you were a teen? Do you have any now?

I am mortally afraid of being home alone late at night, always have been. Waking up after midnight is especially troubling. I hear things in the house, people walking around upstairs. I am cursed with a vivid imagination after the sun goes down. As a teen I feared the usual: asking girls out, dances, acne, grades – those kinds of fears overshadowed any other one’s I might have had.

If you could have immortality, would you take it? Why?

No, I wouldn’t. Tuck Everlasting was an important book for me, because it explored this idea in a way that made me understand the cost of living a very, very long time. Everyone I loved would grow old and die. I’d have to start over a lot (the older I get the less I like that idea). For a guy like Rainsford in DARK EDEN, immortality is an elaborate trick. He’s figured out how to jack the system, and we get a sense of what kind of person it takes to pull those levers. I’m in no rush to die, and there are mysteries there that can haunt me late at night. But I think we’re going somewhere, not nowhere. I am ever hopeful it will be someplace good.

Did you learn anything while writing/revising DARK EDEN, and if so, what was it?

I learned about a lot of unusual fears people have, and that turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I also have a habit of connecting older books to what I’m writing, partly because it’s a chance to re-introduce those books to new readers, but also because I want to re-examine them myself. With DARK EDEN, I went back to The Pearl, The Woman in the Dunes, and The Masque of the Red Death. DARK EDEN has a strong class underpinning, and all those stories dealt with class struggles: trying to move up a level in society, feeling superior, feeling trapped. Those themes run through the story, and I learned a lot about how to write them in a way that will make readers think about them.

If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

I’m happy with the book, it’s what I wanted to write. And really, once a book is printed, I’ve let it go. DARK EDEN is what it was meant to be.

(more…)

The seventeen day Floors tour was AMAZING.

See the photo album here

www.floorsbook.com

Pre-order my new YA book, DARK EDEN, and make me smile – Pre-orders really help get a YA series off the ground. I appreciate it more than you know!

Pre-Order Dark Eden

Visit www.enterdarkeden.com to watch the trailer and get excited!

3:15, season one, is now in print!

www.315stories.com

I’m going to www.wordstockfestival.com. If you’re in the Portland area, please come see me at one of my events:

schedule.wordstockfestival.com

And he’s off (again)!

Patrick