We’ve been working with Philippa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl) and her publisher, Simon and Schuster, on a pioneering project to launch her new novel in Twitter format. This is a first for an international bestselling author of Philippa’s stature. She has reinterpreted the novel as a series of roughly 250 tweets from the book’s main character.

Elizabeth Woodville is The White Queen. Born originally into the House of Lancaster, she seduces and marries the Yorkist King Edward IV. Having risen to royal status by virtue of her beauty she has to use her guile, and the odd bit of witchcraft, to rise to the challenges presented by her precarious position.

Or, in Philippa’s words…

As the examples below demonstrate, what she has to say goes some way beyond the what-I-had-for-breakfast banality that characterises some Twitter exchanges.

If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.

It has to be secret. His friends have a wedding planned for him and I am a nobody. We marry in secret and we bed in a hurry. I adore him.

At dawn Edward’s army rises from mist, like an army of ghosts, and charges up the slopes to Warwick’s army of Lancaster to vicious fighting.

George, the fool, chooses a fool’s death. He wants to be drowned in a barrel of wine: in his chamber at the Tower.

The project has presented creative challenges to the author and some practical challenges to us in executing the idea. This is Philippa Gregory talking about adapting tens of thousands of carefully crafted words of prose into the 140 character format of Twitter…

“Tweets are a discipline, rather like a haiku, and the shortness of the sentence gives each one a rhythm which is really interesting for prose.

“It was more like writing poetry than prose. And some of the tweets seem to me to be more arresting than the prose of the book. I especially like the first one…
If my mother were not a witch, and the descendant of the goddess Melusina, I think none of this could ever have happened to me. But it did.

“I like this so much, I have re-used it when describing the novel, it doesn’t appear in the novel but only in the Twitter version, but it encapsulates for me the mood of the novel, its dreamlike quality, the character of the heroine and invites you to read more. I am certainly going to write creative tweets again.”

So much for the creative challenges and opportunities. Blonde has been charged with making the project happen in practical terms. And this is by no means a trivial exercise.

Clearly Twitter afficionados will want to follow the project on Twitter, or their Twitter client of choice. But Twitter is an inherently noisy channel and maintaining the narrative thread in amongst tweets from everyone else that the reader is following isn’t easy. Also anyone coming to Elizabeth’s profile mid-way through, or after, the event will be presented with the tweets in reverse order – i.e. the latest tweet first – and back to front isn’t the best way to read a novel, whatever its format. So, whilst launching the novel on Twitter is incredibly of-the-moment, Twitter itself isn’t necessarily the ideal channel from a user perspective in which to follow 250 consecutive 140 character episodes.

This is why the project is being implemented in two stages.

Fans will be able to follow @ElizWoodville on Twitter between 11th & 17th August. The tweets will be posted between 17.00 and 20.00 GMT each day, a window that is designed to make the content accessible to both UK and US audiences.

Then, on August 18th, the global publication date for the book, a bespoke Flash application will be launched on the Philippa Gregory website. The application will provide a rich, immersive experience which will allow users to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure. The above visual is a snapshot from the application.

At the time of writing we’re working with the publisher to seed the project to various communities – fans of Philippa Gregory, the publishing industry and the digital/social media scene. The hope is that the Twitter experiment will introduce new readers to Philippa, but already there is evidence of Philippa introducing new people to Twitter.

Watch this space for further learning once the project goes live.

Tags: application, flash, launch, linkedin, novel, PhilippaGregory, publishing, socialmedia, Twitter, WhiteQueen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Content/utility, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.