Live tweeting of Philippa Gregory’s new novel ended on 17th August. To coincide with the book’s international publication date, the following day we put live a bespoke Flash application on Philippa’s website that allows fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure.
As mentioned in a previous post, we have been helping Philippa Gregory and her team with the launch of her latest novel on Twitter.
The first phase of the project has been the release of the c.250 tweets over the seven days leading up to the global publication date for the novel on August 18. At the time of writing this post, the final installment of tweets is due to be released from 5pm GMT this evening. The tweets have been published via the Twitter api using a specially written php/MYSQL broadcast system.
The project has attracted the best part of 600 followers who, based on their spontaneous reactions, have largely enjoyed the experience. Here, in the form of a status update picture essay, is a representative, warts-and-all sample of the @messages that have been sent to Elizabeth Woodville – the main protagonist in the book and the source of the White Queen tweets.
Elizabeth’s opening tweet…
Almost immediately fans comment on, and engage with, what is seen to be the “racy” nature of the tweets…
With roughly 33 tweets going out each day, the frequency of posting was not to everyone’s taste. Such a reaction was probably inevitable and, to be honest, we saw less of this kind of reaction than we had expected…
Some people clearly became actively engaged with the Twitter persona of Ms. Woodville…
Some started to question the point of the exercise – isn’t this giving away the plot?
But such responses were in the minority…
The dust has yet to settle on this project, and Phase 2 kicks off tomorrow (18th) with the addition of a bespoke Flash application to the Philippa Gregory site. This application will allow fans to read the tweets uninterrupted and at their leisure in a more user-friendly environment than that provided by Twitter itself. We’ve learned a lot already from this project that will hopefully be applied to further experiments in the future.
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.
This week we were delighted to be involved in the launch of the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival with the design and build of their new look website. The website showcases the ‘Enlightenment’ programme of events from 14 Aug – 06 Sep. It also showcases the new EIF brand and the newly commissioned (and slightly controversial) Edinburgh Toile by our friends in Glasgow, Timorous Beasties. (Not the Edinburgh Toilet as one of our developers mistakenly called it throughout production!)
Having worked closely with EIF for the 2008 Festival, we were keen to improve the usability of the site and make searching for events totally intuitive with both a general search and search using a diary mechanism.
The initial response to the new website has been fantastic and we’ve already got our eyes on events for when tickets go on sale on 04 Apr.