New ways of story-telling

Driving forces

The scenario

Fast-paced society

Our entertainment needs have drastically changed in the past years. Our society has gone into the highest gear; everything is so fast paced now. Video games are the obvious choice as new prominent form of entertainment, and for a while it even looked like they were going to take over all other forms of entertainment. But this didn't happen. Computer games are usually not something you can just take with you, or pick up anywhere and quickly play in short time spans. Furthermore people sometimes don't want to be bombarded by all the audio-visual force that video-game throw at you. As an alternative to video games people surprisingly kept reading books. Books of paper even! Since people seemingly could not let go of the particular experience a paper book provides.

A new model for book

Because of the change of entertainment needs publishers saw a big drop in book sales at first. But after they came up with a whole new model to provide books sales were skyrocketing again. The publishers and writers understood that their new audience wanted quick bite-sized stories, and even some interactivity in their books. And thus came the new way of storytelling: stories became shorter and episodic content became very popular. Also books in which the reader could have a choice of how the story would roll out became very popular: here a reader would get a few options on how he wanted the characters to react and download part of the story that would allow for that response. The whole model was supported by on-demand printing. People could just download their weekly episode of their favorite book and print it themselves. The printers even received some sort of intelligence and would print the book with a storyline that would most appeal to that user, based on data mining on previous story paths taken.

The role of publishers

The role of the publisher changed somewhat with this new model too. They would now maintain subscription based websites which would have new episodic content to download every day. Furthermore the larger publishers also maintained a vast network of "vending machine like" on-demand book printers. These would use recycled paper and non-oil based ink to print environmental friendly books.

Educational literature

Books became more and more for entertainment purpose only as educational books were replaced by far more handy digital counterparts. Digital readers and the internet acted as the primary medium for these but never took off as a viable medium for entertainment literature

Background information

Environmental factors

Conclusion

Books, although slightly changed from their ancient model, still are a very big part of entertainment and are enjoyed by billions of people worldwide.