In the spirit of full disclosure, Ariel Aberg-Riger, one of the team members behind The Amanda Project, is my former co-worker from the book publishing consulting firm I was at before Ypulse. She started working with Fourth Story Media founder Lisa Holton more than a year ago and got in touch to let me know Invisible I the first "Amanda" book in the interactive teen series published by HarperCollins was coming out in stores this week.

With all of our recent discussion around new technology and traditional book publishing, I thought Ypulse readers would be interested to hear more about The Amanda Project, the first franchise to come out of Fourth Story Media's multi-platform approach to YA, which aims to connect books with collaborative web fiction, social media and mobile. I caught up with the core members of The Amanda Project team: Lisa, Ariel, Editorial Director JillEllyn Riley and Invisible I author Melissa Kantor over email to ask a few questions. For clarity's sake, answers are attributed by initials in parentheses.

Invisible I is out in book stores now, but we're giving away a free copy to the first three commenters to name their favorite mystery and why.

Ypulse: What was the inspiration behind "The Amanda Project"? How did that translate into an interactive site and book series?

The Amanda Project: We started Fourth Story Media because we are excited by the idea of marrying traditional book publishing with interactive storytelling. Like many ideas, The Amanda Project came out of a bunch of different, seemingly disparate threads. We were interested in inviting talented authors to collaborate on an ongoing narrative; we wanted to see if we could publish a story that would allow interactivity and reader participation, and we were thinking about how girls use technology to express themselves. The original idea for Amanda was a story about a girl named Emily who worked on her middle school newspaper. Amanda just appeared one day….and then she disappeared. (LH)

YP: How has the interactive component changed the editorial process? What was the most fun aspect? The most challenging?

TAP: In some ways the interactivity aspect has not changed anything, TAP involves really inspired storytellers like Melissa Kantor telling the really amazing story of Amanda. But on the other hand, it is totally distinctive, told from many different points of view, with multiple authors and multiple narrators AND multiple creators since the girls themselves on the website get to come on and help solve the mystery, offer theories, and create fictional characters who have the opportunity to completely take part in the investigation. This makes each book, and the narrative-interwoven website, this incredibly rich, layered, and vibrant collage. It also makes the process a little less straightforward, since it is not a single author with his or her vision working alone but instead collaborative. It pulls in an abundance of creative energy from more sources — the other authors, and the girls on the website, for example. The most fun (and challenging!) part is working with this incredible collection of brilliant minds, physical and virtual, to create the origins and potential destinations, the characters, the plots, and the Amanda-verse. There is a lot to wrangle! (JE)

YP: Melissa, what was it like shaping a story that would be left open to interpretation by the readers? Do you have any favorite mystery stories or other sources that served as inspiration?

TAP: I was a HUGE Nancy Drew fan as a kid, then moved on to other great mysteries (Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and more popular/contemporary writers (Mary Higgins Clark). TV has definitely played a role in inspiring me (Veronica Mars, anyone?). In terms of the reader/writer relationship that The Amanda Project has created, I find the whole reader-input idea really exciting; as a writer, I normally have to wait to hear what my readers think until after the fact, when the book's published, and I've moved on to another set of characters. So to have the opportunity to be in a dialogue (of sorts) with people who are excited about the characters I'm spending so much time with is a real thrill. I love that the identity a reader invented is included in "Invisible I." What a cool moment for her AND for me! (MK)

YP: The site was in closed beta testing from early April to last month. In what ways did those first teens shape the site for the first wave of non-beta teens?

TAP: Our beta members are AMAZING. Since theamandaproject.com is different from anything else that is currently out there, we really worked with our beta members to make sure that the site was easy to navigate and understand (as well as fun!). We've been incredibly impressed with how quickly the beta members jumped into Amanda's world. We're asking them to interact in a fairly sophisticated way (develop a character, participate in a fictional world, follow clues and narrative threads), and the beta started 6 months before the books were in stores, so there was only a paragraph of backstory to go on. And yet, they totally got it. Among other things, the feedback from beta led us to develop the Zine (they were hungry for more places to write!), and shepherd a member's initial immersion into the site (every new member is now assigned a guide and given a welcome pack). Most impressive is that after 6 months most of our beta girls are still with us, writing and posting every week to help us find Amanda. (AAR)

YP: Who do you see as the ideal reader/content creator for "The Amanda Project"?

TAP: I see The Amanda Project as appealing to all different kinds of readers. There's a fantastic story line, appealing narrators, mystery, suspense–even some romance. So any girl or boy who loves to read will devour it. At the same time, there are more reluctant readers out there, many of whom spend a lot of time on the internet, and they are probably going to be drawn in by the interactive nature of the project and by its technological pleasures and the instant gratification of, say, creating a profile or discovering their totems. Once they're excited about those aspects of the project, I think the story (where is Amanda?) and the characters (who is looking for her?) will keep them engaged. What strikes me as so remarkable about this project is how it speaks to traditional readers and to those who have traditionally eschewed reading for other pursuits. (MK)

YP: What other multimedia components are in the works for "The Amanda Project"? What role will technology play in the marketing efforts?

TAP: Technology is playing a major role in marketing efforts, since our members live online. We're in the process of enhancing our Facebook presence, recently redesigned our MySpace, and we're also on Twitter (where we've found there are a good number of teens as well as teen librarians). This week we teamed up with I Heart Daily to run a week-long clue hunt in their newsletter, and we're planning on running similar puzzles/scavenger hunts in the future. We're also evangelizing our most active users as an Amanda Project street team – giving them digital assets that they can easily take and spread. Mobile will be our next big push. We started with the datamatrix code (Ed. note: QR code) on the Invisible I jacket that leads to an Amanda mobi site, and we have a storyline coming up where we'll be asking members to download and post stickers, take cell phone photos of them, and upload them on the site. (AAR)

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, publishers of Prophecy of the Sisters.

Categorized under: Author Spotlight, Books

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