A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms

Mobile media – from mobile phones to smartphones to netbooks – are transforming our daily lives. We communicate, we locate, we network, we play, and much more using our mobile devices. In Mobile Interface Theory, Jason Farman demonstrates how the worldwide adoption of mobile technologies is causing a reexamination of the core ideas about what it means to live our everyday lives. He argues that mobile media’s pervasive computing model, which allows users to connect and interact with the internet while moving across a wide variety of locations, has produced a new sense of self among users – a new embodied identity that stems from virtual space and material space regularly enhancing, cooperating or disrupting each other. Exploring a range of mobile media practices – including mobile maps and GPS technologies, location-aware social networks, urban and alternate reality games that use mobile devices, performance art, and storytelling projects – Farman illustrates how mobile technologies are changing the ways we produce lived, embodied spaces.

Split into two complementary parts, the book first paints a picture of how transmedia producers were, or were not,�incorporated into creative decision-making centers of these serialized programs.�The second section explains how the presence of off-site transmedia texts begins to alter the very narrative construction of the on-air series themselves. Including interviews with the transmedia workers, this groundbreaking study extends the field of television studies into brand new areas, and brings a dying medium into the 21st Century.

Everybody wants innovation—or do they? Creative People Must Be Stopped shows how individuals and organizations sabotage their own best intentions to encourage "outside the box" thinking. It shows that the antidote to this self-defeating behavior is to identify which of the six major types of constraints are hindering innovation: individual, group, organizational, industry-wide, societal, or technological. Once innovators and other leaders understand exactly which constraints are working against them and how to overcome them, they can create conditions that foster innovation instead of stopping it in its tracks.

The author's model of constraints on innovation integrates insights from the vast literature on innovation with his own observations of hundreds of organizations. The book is filled with assessments, tools, and real-world examples.

• The author's research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Guardian and San Jose Mercury News, as well as on Fox News and on NPR's Marketplace
• Includes illustrative examples from leading organizations
• Offers a practical guide for bringing new ideas to fruition even within a previously rigid organizational culture

Everyone loves a children's book—and many dream about writing one. But is it actually possible for an unpublished writer—armed with a good story idea and a love of kids—to write, sell, publish, and promote a book? Yes, it is!

Clearly and concisely written with straightforward advice and a plethora of specific up-to-date recommendations, Writing Children's Books For Dummies provides step-by-step information on everything aspiring children's book authors need to know—from researching the current marketplace to developing story ideas, strengthening writing skills, dealing with editors, and submitting proposals and manuscripts to agents and publishers.

• Updated and improved writing exercises
• All new content on social media and establishing an online presence as an author
• Fresh, updated content on publishing via hard copy and all the e- platforms

"Whether you are managing a product or a service, your business needs to become more open and more inclusive in order to be more innovative. Open Services Innovation will be an invaluable guide to intrepid managers who commit to making that journey."
—GARY HAMEL, visiting professor, London Business School; director, Management Lab; and author, The Future of Management

"I tore out page after page to share with my leaders. Chesbrough has pioneered an entire rethink of business innovation that’s rich in concept, deeply explained, with tools ready to use in every industry."
—SCOTT COOK, founder and chairman of the executive committee, Intuit

"Focusing on core competence often tempts managers to keep continuing what succeeded in the past. A far more important question is what capabilities are critical in the future, and Chesbrough shows how to ask and answer these issues."
—CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN, Robert & Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and author, The Innovator's Dilemma

"To thrive, businesses will need to master the lessons of open service innovation. Here is their one-stop guidebook with important lessons clearly and compellingly presented."
—JAMES C. SPOHRER, director, IBM University Programs World-Wide

"Open Innovation pioneer Henry Chesbrough breaks new ground with Open Services Innovation, a persuasive argument for the power of co-creation in the world of services."
—TOM KELLEY, general manager, IDEO, and author, The Ten Faces of Innovation, The Art of Innovation

"With his trademark style of beautifully explained examples, Henry Chesbrough shows how open service innovation and new business models can help you escape this product commodity trap and bring you to the next level of competition."
—ALEX OSTERWALDER, author, Business Model Generation

"Open Services Innovation shows how a business can redefine itself as a service organisation and tap into faster growth through shared innovation."
—SIR TERRY LEAHY, chief executive, Tesco

As a priest and a physician, Richard Frechette has known the body, heart, and soul of people in the most anguishing of circumstances. He has carried out his double ministry over the past twenty-five years in settings of extreme poverty, violence, social upheaval, and natural disasters. This personal experience of tough realities has been at once a descent into chaos and an ascent into compassion, never more so than in his work in Haiti.

The reflections in this volume are less about Haiti than they are about real-life incidents that happened there, during a particular time in history. In a fuller sense, these reflections shed light on what happens in any place, at any time, to people of any race or class, who live out an assault on their human dignity. Whenever the dignity of human beings is marred, the human spirit finds itself in threatened conditions, and seeks desperately to preserve what is human about it. This is the unfailing light of God’s grace, ever present and faithful, fiercely persistent in trying to renew the face of the earth and the pilgrim human heart.

Grounded in space and time, and yet speaking of universal concerns, this very personal volume shows how the ancient human scourges of poverty, ignorance, illness, and violence desecrate humanity and weaken the spirit. Yet as Frechette shows, from these ashes many people, with the help of God, valiantly rise. This is a stunning work that crosses conventional barriers between the personal and the political, between degradation by others and elevation by selves.

“I will lead you by the way…. that you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.” –Thomas Merton

"A broad and deep look at how electronic media are changing storytelling . . . . Completely fascinating." —Booklist, starred review

DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF WHAT MAKES A MEGA-BESTSELLER IN THIS ENTERTAINING, REVELATORY GUIDE
 
What do Michael Corleone, Jack Ryan, and Scout Finch have in common? Creative writing professor and thriller writer James W. Hall knows. Now, in this entertaining, revelatory book, he reveals how bestsellers work, using twelve twentieth-century blockbusters as case studies—including The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Jaws. From tempting glimpses inside secret societies, such as submariners in The Hunt for Red October, and Opus Dei in The Da Vinci Code, to vivid representations of the American Dream and its opposite—the American Nightmare—in novels like The Firm and The Dead Zone, Hall identifies the common features of mega-bestsellers. Including fascinating and little-known facts about some of the most beloved books of the last century, Hit Lit is a must-read for fiction lovers and aspiring writers alike, and makes us think anew about why we love the books we love.

Many famous authors write their novels in a matter of weeks. William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks. Joyce Carol Oates often cranks out two or three books a year. Stephen King believes first drafts should take no more than three months to complete. So, what's the trick? Novel writing isn't about inspiration. It's about the time, energy, and discipline to see the project to its finish.

With 90 Days to Your Novel at your side, now is the time. This inspiring guide will be your push, your deadline, and your spark to finally, without excuses, and in three short months, nail that first draft of your novel.

The difference between wanna-be writers and real writers is the difference between talk and work. If you commit to the schedule and the techniques within 90 Days to Your Novel and invest two to three hours a day for twelve weeks, you will complete your book. An outline will appear. Characters will take shape. A plot will emerge. Scenes will come together and form a story worth reading. And then the talking can begin!

This helpful guide provides:

• Instruction that distills the elements of the novel - from crafting your outline to developing intriguing characters and believable plots
• Strategies for gaining support from your family and friends
• Motivating insights about writing and writers to minimize your inevitable moments of doubt
• A schedule to keep you in the writing zone and keep you focused, creative, and working