… The publishing industry appears to be embracing transmedia books as a method of franchise building. After Scholastic completed its ten-book run of The 39 Clues in August, the publishing company announced an additional six books to complement the initial run as the Cahill family faces off against the Vespers. Anthony Zuiker continued putting his protagonist Steve Dark in dangerous situations with Level 26: Dark Prophecy, and Patrick Carman’s PC Studios released an onslaught of multimedia content. This year marked the release of the third installment in Carman’s Skeleton Creek series of books, where Ryan McCray and Sarah Fincher provide a tag-team narrative consisting of the written word and video. Additionally, Carman launched the first book in his futuristic crime series Trackers. Smith and Tinker attempted to rival Carman’s frantic schedule, introducing both the Lost Souls book / board game and the Nanovor book / video game franchises.

Read the rest here – www.wired.com/magazine/decode

When we last saw Adam, Emily, Finn, and Lewis they were locked up, framed for a crime they didn’t commit. I’m pleased to say that TRACKERS II: Shantorian, will bring all of Adam Henderson’s secrets into focus. Who is telling the truth? Who is not what they say they are? Where does the digital trail lead? All the big questions are answered in TRACKERS II. And you’ll get to watch the biggest moments as you pass back and forth between the book and the web to watch videos of the most action packed scenes. Get ready for a some huge surprises – TRACKERS II is ready for take off. Patrick Carman

Buy The Book:

Become a TRACKER and play TRACKERS mini-games

Also check out new TRACKERS merch here

More TRACKERS posts coming soon!

Patrick

Drawing on their experience distributing books from all children’s publishers through their school book clubs and book fairs, Scholastic’s editors created a list of ten trends from the year in children’s books. President of Scholastic Book Clubs Judy Newman remarks in the release, “We’ve seen some exciting innovation in children’s publishing in 2010, including new formats and platforms for storytelling that are helping more and more kids become book lovers. At the same time, we’re seeing a rejuvenation of some classic genres, which I think is evidence of the timeless power that stories and characters have on the lives of children.”

1. The expanding Young Adult audience
2. The year of dystopian fiction
3. Mythology-based fantasy (Percy Jackson followed by series like The Kane Chronicles, Lost Heroes of Olympus and Goddess Girls)
4. Multimedia series (The 39 Clues, Skeleton Creek, The Search for WondLa)
5. A focus on popular characters – from all media
6. The shift to 25 to 30 percent fewer new picture books, with characters like Pinkalicious, Splat Cat and Brown Bear, Brown Bear showing up in Beginning Reader books
7. The return to humor
8. The rise of the diary and journal format (The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dear Dumb Diary, Dork Diaries, The Popularity Papers, and Big Nate)
9. Special-needs protagonists
10. Paranormal romance beyond vampires (Linger and Linger, Beautiful Creatures, Immortal, and Prophesy of the Sisters)

Great to make the list!

PC

The holiday season is here again. Really? It seems like only two weeks ago I was blasting my nephew with a Nerf machine gun (see video below!), but apparently that was eleven months ago. It’s like time travel!

Skeleton Creek keeps on rolling with over 750,000 different people watching almost 7,000,000 videos since the launch of the series. Thank you my faithful readers and video watchers! Keep spreading the word and I promise to keep blowing my advances making multimedia books for a wired generation. Speaking of which….

CASTING OPEN

I have several new multimedia projects in the works, most of them top secret for the moment. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try out for a part and I hope you will. I’ve just launched a casting page that will give you everything you need to know in order to try out for a part. Just head over to the casting page and get ready to put on your acting face: www.patrickcarman.com/casting

PODCAST LAUNCHES

In other multimedia news, the free podcasts of all videos for Skeleton Creek III are now available in the iTunes store. Just search for Skeleton Creek and you should find free podcasts for the videos in all three Skeleton Creek books. You’ll also find the free and paid apps for the first two books in case you like turning electronic pages more than you do paper ones.

And if you’re a TRACKERS fan (same format, action story!) TRACKERS II comes out in one month. Stay tuned for the trailer, which is scheduled to release on December 10th or sooner.

Happy holidays!

Patrick Carman

“Skeleton Creek: The Crossbones,” the third installment of the “Skeleton Creek” series, goes further in straddling analog and digital realms. The continuing story of Ryan McCray and Sarah Fincher’s investigation into the supernatural conspiracy surrounding their hometown is one part “X-Files,” one part “Blair Witch Project.”

Sarah, an aspiring filmmaker, records her various expeditions and posts videos of them on her site, at sarahfincher.com, which readers can access when they encounter various passwords throughout the book. The videos are pretty spooky, and Sarah’s site is full of hidden links that make repeated visits worthwhile. Unfortunately, reality requires the book to make some compromises. Given that not everyone has access to the Internet at all times, the book’s narrator, Ryan, is prone to recapping the videos in the pages that follow each new password. In this fashion, the book tries to have it both ways: it wants to offer a rich multimedia experience for the reader while having the story stand on its own, broadband connection or not.

But “The Crossbones” makes a different attempt to bridge online and off-line content that is more interesting and important. At various times, Sarah and Ryan find information useful to their investigation by way of a Google or YouTube search. These searches are described in some detail — enough so that a reader can go down the same path and find the same information. These are not Web pages made by the book’s author to appear real, but actual sites and videos that predate the book. This “found search result” form of storytelling is a clever way to bring in the outside world without calling too much attention to the practice.

Read the rest here – www.nytimes.com