Three years ago no one had heard of an enhanced ebook. While I can’t claim credit for coining the term, we were using it unwittingly at Macmillan in 2007 when we produced a series of ebooks with extras bolted on. In many ways neither the publishing world nor readers were ready.

Now of course there is a regular currency of enhanced ebooks, and not just enhanced ebooks of the content bolted on a la DVD extras model. While this is still the primary offering, it is no longer the only offering. Publishers may move slowly, but they do move. Eventually.

There is a new generation of publisher-produced content that seeks to be fully social, interactive, animated, graphical, new media native and multimedia in a way which no one (ok, publishers) has really done before. Except of course new media writers. Yet there has been no real conversation between the two. Why? It seems like we should have hit the meeting point where there could and should be a productive alliance, when in fact the gulf seems as wide as ever.

On the writing side I often hear that people feel ignored by publishers. Essentially the world of commercial publishing is a closed shop unwilling to listen to the maverick, the outsider and the original, and will ultimately pay for this as audiences gravitate to newer and amorphous forms that exist across the digital media they increasingly engage with at the expense of all others.

There is an element of truth in this. However publishers have to sell books – or something – to keep going. Understandably they are keen not to simply disappear and much new media writing is not designed to be commercial, being associated with a more recondite and experimental mindset. Publishers will always feel constrained by the nature of their audience and the retail opportunities available. This might be an argument for by-passing publishers or intermediaries’ altogether, although history (that most unreliable of guides?) suggests that there will always be a role for the market-making middle man.

What I would like is mediation. It’s time that publishers looked more closely at the field and the way it generates new ideas, interfaces, narrative and informational forms, the way it can unite technical and creative expertise, the way it innovates into whole new product categories. However hopefully also new media writers will look to publishers’ concerns, and constantly ask who is reading this and why, what is the scale and the nature of the audience, how can we package this for wider consumption and what is the business behind it. These grubby financial concerns may be some way removed from the discourse of a critical, digital avant garde but they are the kind of questions without which new media writing will forever marginalise itself.

So, yes, the view from the publisher’s office may have been negative in the past. Publishers are changing fast though. Digital departments are mushrooming and a new appetite is abroad for hitherto unforeseen modes of publishing. With a dialogue from both sides, we could be at the beginning of a new phase not only for publishing, but for writing.

Michael Bhaskar

Digital Publishing Manager at Profile Books

As one of the judges of the New Media Writing Prize I’m interested in discovering the work of individual writers who have boldly carried their ideas into the digital arena and taken advantage of some of the possibilities it offers. The written word can be all too easily duplicated from page to screen with little or no benefit or enhancement; I’m looking for work that includes the physical presence of writing, but which could not possibly exist on paper.

There is a large amount of new media writing experimentation across the internet – the long-established Electronic Literature Directory is a good place to start to see the variety of what’s out there. Or, to see what’s currently in vogue, try The Literary Platform. These are exciting times for writers wanting to experiment with words and technology. However much of the material that has already been produced relies on academic self-reflection, nods to long-dead famous writers, or is so obscure and inaccessible it’s difficult to stay with it for longer than a few minutes.

I’m keen to see something that escapes from these clichés and offers up a work that is truly engaging. Something that makes me sit up and want to read/experience it more – further – rather than meander across the screen for the close button. New media writing is an exciting arena for writers with passion, visionary ideas and the incentive to learn and resource from the internet itself. The possibilities are vast – if not endless. But sometimes having no boundaries isn’t a great thing. A good story – or poem – often has an almost indefinable quality about it that makes it special. New media writing is in some ways still seeking out those indefinable qualities.

Regardless of delivery platform, level of technical accomplishment or choice of subject matter, I’d like to see something that grabs from the outset and delivers a genuinely original and compelling piece of digital writing.

Andy Campbell
www.dreamingmethods.com