I think I have just found a great marketing ploy by the creators and actor of the television show Castle, which is featured on Prime/Seven here in Australia.
The premise is fairly simple, as a police drama/comedy Richard Castle is a successful writer who is allowed to tag along with a homicide detective to initially research for a new character and ends up becoming one of the team going around and helping to solve murders.
The network abc.com have created a website to coincide with a particular episode, there are reviews of the novels Castle "wrote", news items, questions and answers etc very well done and very realistic they have also set up Facebook and Twitter accounts with feeds from Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion, who is a prolific user of both sites).
As a marketing strategy it is brilliant, not only does it give another element to the show and the characters involved, making it more interactive for the fans.
It gave me pause for thought though in regards to the future of writing, novels, scripts, plays whatever and about just how interactive you can make your own fictional world. The website created for Richard Castle is completely believable and if someone who has no idea about the show and the premise of the site would have no trouble in believing the content and the validity of Richard Castle himself.
I have a finished novel manuscript sitting on my hard drive waiting for a massive edit and probable rewrite to update a few things as it was written a few years ago. After reading the site and yes I admit it I am a fan of the show, following Nathan Fillion who I have admired for quite a while, it has helped give me a fresh outlook on my own work. I have considered rewriting it as a movie either feature or telemovie or perhaps as a mini-series but now I am thinking of other alternative ways. Creating my own web presence for the novel, which is a murder mystery set here in Australia, the protagonist is a young writer who is facing her own demons and the antagonist is a cyber stalker who moves from sexually assaulting his victims to murdering them. Set in the dark streets of Melbourne and country Victoria particularly Castlemaine.
Would it enhance my chances of publication in the mainstream publishing world or would it give me a completely different alternative altogether?
In a world where less books are being sold, where hand-held readers are becoming the most popular ways of reading, preferred for their portability, especially when several "books" are held on the device instead of being weighed down by the individual tomes and where that little something ... the little bit different seems to make a big difference in popularity.
Anyway I do recommend having a look at the website et al, if interested because they are well done and interesting reading in their own rights even if you have never seen the show.
http://www.richardcastle.net/
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