This year has seen immersive fiction apps experience a growth in downloads as readers seek new ways to engage with stories. Defined by their animations, interactive visual effects, and scores, immersive fiction has helped to infuse digital entertainment into the traditional form of paperback novels. We’ve explored this growing phenomenon in this article.
Interactive Entertainment on the Rise
Books aren’t the only traditional media form that has experienced a makeover thanks to the boundless possibilities of technology. Netflix has experimented with choose-your-own-adventure shows such as Kaleidoscope and You vs. Wild, while Spotify’s interactive Magic Ball tool offered users their fortunes based on their music choices. Even chores and hobbies have been enhanced with interactive elements.
Everything from meditation apps to note-taking journals has integrated playable features to help users build consistent habits. As for traditional games, the bingo games at Paddy Power offer digitally revamped variants of the community hall classic, whether through online chat rooms or eye-catching animations. The immersive fiction movement is yet another example of using digital enhancement to reach new audiences.
What is Immersive Fiction?
Immersive fiction is distinguished from e-books by its use of visual effects, sound effects, and 3D animations that are carefully timed to play at key moments in a story. For example, if a book were to include a passage on a fire-breathing dragon, a flame effect could burn the page away rather than display a traditional page-turning animation.
They can include audiobook-style narration and even scores that reflect the tension in a story. Interactive choose-your-own-adventure elements are also common. The popular immersive fiction at Galatea includes more than 600 stories from a variety of genres, including sci-fi, thrillers, and romantic comedies. Like streaming services, these can be accessed through a monthly subscription model.
The Galatea site reports that more than 60 million chapters are read monthly, a staggering figure when considering reports that paperback book sales are declining. This represents an exciting new avenue for publishers looking to increase sales and engagement with a reading-averse demographic.
Popular Examples
Authors have been experimenting with immersive fiction for more than 20 years, though it’s really hit its stride with the advent of smartphone technology. In 2009, musician and author Nick Cave released an app version of his novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, which included optional narration, a self-produced score, and intermittent videos.
The books have also been embraced by readers and authors of romantasy — a burgeoning genre that combines romance and fantasy. Galatea’s most popular series is The Millenium Wolves franchise, which has been read more than 125 million times since its release. When considering that one of the best-selling novels of the past decade, Fifty Shades, sold 15 million copies worldwide, the potential of immersive fiction cannot be understated.
A New Era for Digital Books
Immersive fiction injects the most exciting elements of digital entertainment into traditional books to create something wholly fresh and exciting. Considering its emphatic embrace by readers around the globe, publishers should take note of the emerging sector’s potential.
