Banging the Digital Drum

writerinthenorth · Post by **writerinthenorth** » Thu February 3rd, 2011, 1:42 pm

I've just completed a collaboration with on-line site Book Drumthat has given me the opportunity to enhance my short story collection We Never Had It So Goodusing pictures, videos, maps and music to recreate the spirit of the late 1950s, where the stories are set.

Book Drum (bookdrum.com) has adopted what they call the companion model. Using contributors, they provide page-by-page commentaries and multi-media content to complement a wide range of classic and contemporary titles.

Talking to the editor Hector Macdonald about creating a profile for the book, we both felt these particular stories would lend themselves well to this interactive treatment because on just about every page there are references to the way people were living their lives fifty years ago that could be brought to life the Book Drum way. So, for example, you can read about the boy watching the TV western Wagon Train in one story, and go to the appropriate bookmark on the site to see the opening titles and listen to the theme song of that very programme; or you can recapture the sights of the 1950s fairground you read about in my story Fair Fight by looking at some period images that have been kindly supplied by the National Fairground Archive.

There is much more like this in the Book Drum profile for We Never Had It So Good. The whole profile took about four months to complete. Apparently the editor is very pleased with it, and intends to make a special feature on the site. Currently the profile is handily placed top right of the home page on the site. Just go to http://www.bookdrum.com/ and click the cover picture for We Never Had It So Good. Let me know what you think, either here, at Book Drum, or on my writerinthenorth blog which has a posting about the new venture.

fljustice · Post by **fljustice** » Thu February 3rd, 2011, 5:15 pm

Very interesting "companion" concept. What's their business model? How do they make money? Will be very interested in your experience with this experiment.

Some publishers are doing "enhanced" eBooks where the links are embedded in the text. If they already have the rights, the material can be included in the file of an eBook. If not, it has to be bookmarked, which means if links are broken or dead, no way to recover.

LoveHistory · Post by **LoveHistory** » Fri February 4th, 2011, 5:36 pm

Very interesting. Best of luck with it, writerinthenorth!

anne whitfield · Post by **anne whitfield** » Sat February 5th, 2011, 8:49 pm

Sounds interesting. Good luck with it.

wendy · Post by **wendy** » Sun February 6th, 2011, 12:15 am

A neat idea. Have fun!

writerinthenorth · Post by **writerinthenorth** » Mon February 7th, 2011, 3:33 pm

To be honest, Faith, I have no idea what Book Drum's business model is. The only obvious thing I can see is that all of the profiles have a 'buy through Amazon' link so maybe they get some kick-back from that, but that's going to be peanuts if anything.

It may be that they are in for the long haul. The editor and co-founder Hector Macdonald told me that he hoped that eventually ebooks would hyperlink directly to Book Drum's bookmarks. That would seem to offer some commercial potential, but I dunno...

Maybe they just do it for love.

Writer in the North

BTW, I'm 'Bookmark of the day' on the Book Drum site today. Rush and see it at Book Drum before it disappears.

wendy · Post by **wendy** » Tue February 8th, 2011, 2:15 pm

[/QUOTE]BTW, I'm 'Bookmark of the day' on the Book Drum site today. Rush and see it at Book Drum before it disappears.[/QUOTE]

I caught it! The Williams book does sound interesting. I'll have to check it out.

Historical Fiction Online

Banging the Digital Drum

Banging the Digital Drum

The Book Drum business